A Plague of Loki
by fullofleaves
Summary: Loki may have tried to enslave the planet, but Tony sure doesn't plan on letting a stupid little detail like that come between him and the (admittedly very remote) possibility of Happily Ever After. Three months after the failed invasion in New York, he seems to have found the way to give their relationship a second chance. Sequel to Are You There, God of Mischief? M/M slash.
1. Never Sleep with a Space Wizard

Tony wakes up on the floor.

To be exact, he's flat out on his stomach, one hand sandwiched between his face and the hardwood and the other stretched out in front of him, reaching with clenched fingers. The dream still floats fresh in his mind. And it was a dream: no point in pretending otherwise, no matter how real it felt. Real enough to half-wake him in the middle of the night. Real enough to coax him out of bed, sleepwalking across the length of the room. Real enough that he can still see the dim silhouette of a tall figure in the doorway, and real enough that he can still hear a low, growling voice echo in his ear.

(_Tony Stark..._)

He pulls himself up onto his hands and knees, rubbing the tail ends of fog from his eyes and giving his head a shake to clear his brain. "Jarvis, lights," he mutters through a yawn. They come up too bright, glaring suddenly and cutting through the darkness; Tony shields his face with an arm. "Thirty percent!"

"Apologies, sir."

The lights dim to a tolerable level. Tony blinks to adjust his eyes, pushes his hair back, and drops his arm. "Better. What time is it?"

"Three twenty-six in the morning."

"What time did I fall asleep?"

"Nine forty-two."

Five and a half hours of sleep. Well, that's a lot better than what he'd been averaging over the last couple months, so he'll count it as a success. Sort of. Waking up fifteen feet from his bed kind of puts a damper on things, but at least he slept. He actually slept.

The pills Bruce gave him worked.

"Bruce still down in the lab?" he asks, already knowing what the answer will be before Jarvis answers in the affirmative. He can sense the crackling vibrancy of Bruce's energy, active somewhere in the house. Not possible to pinpoint, but present all the same. A trickle of hazy knowledge through the back of his mind.

He yanks on the first pair of pants he grabs from the closet, followed by a shirt selected with equal care, and heads out to find Bruce. It's not hard. All he needs to do is follow the noise: the irritatingly cheerful treble beat of 80s bubble-gum pop grows louder with each step he takes towards the lab. By the time he's down the stairs, he can hear Bruce's voice half humming, half mumbling-singing along.

_What are words for... When no one listens any more..._

Leaning against the wall at the bottom of the staircase, Tony can't help but smirk. "I think you might be the last person left on Earth still rocking out to Missing Persons."

Bruce freezes mid-head-bob, whipping around with a HYDRA gun energy storage cell in his hands and something between open-mouthed shock and a sheepish grin plastered across his face. "Um," is all he can seem to say for a few seconds while Tony tries not to laugh. Then, "I... thought you were in bed."

"I was in bed. For almost six hours. That's long enough, don't you think? Especially with the party going on down here."

"Six..." Bruce starts, but doesn't even bother finishing that thought, cutting himself off to look at his watch. "Oh. Oh boy. It's three-thirty, isn't it?"

"Yep." Tony, sauntering into the lab, claps him on the back. "Don't worry about it. I lose track of time, too. It's practically a requirement for working in here. You start something just after dinner, and then, bam! Suddenly, three in the morning."

"But did you get any sleep?" asks Bruce in a clever little shift of the conversation.

And that's a good question. Did Tony get any sleep? Technically speaking, the answer would be 'yes'. He did sleep, for a while, thought the bizarrely hyper-realistic dreams and the confusion of waking up on the floor may have counteracted any restful benefits. But still he nods while staring down at the array of gun parts spread out over the worktop and says a quiet, "Yeah," because that's the answer Bruce is looking for. And it's a lot easier than trying to explain the truth.

Bruce nods along with him. "That sounds like a 'yeah, but'."

"Yeah, but," Tony agrees. "Just some crazy dreams."

"Sleepwalking?"

Tony's jaw reflexively clenches. How did he know?

"Common side effect," Bruce explains. "The pills knock you out, but a lot of people experience incredibly vivid, strange dreams, and some end up sleepwalking. A few have a bad reaction and vomit all over themselves, soooo... Good thing you dodged that one?"

"Eh, the night's still young," mutters Tony. "You never know what magic might happen." Glancing down at the worktop again, he sets a white plastic cylinder spinning on its side. "Make any progress?"

"If you count ruling out eight more simulated designs as progress, then yeah. Progress was made. Explosive progress."

Bruce goes through them one by one, having Jarvis bring up the 3D recording of all eight sims for Tony to watch. All eight fizzling failures. Six lasts the longest, with all beams fired up and focused before the casing cracks and a spark ignites, turning the whole display into a ball of flame. Seven causes the smallest explosion. Just a little fire, a puff of smoke, and a broken collapse. Eight doesn't explode at all. But then, it doesn't seem to do anything at all, either. No explosion, no fire, no smoke. No portal.

"What's the deal here?" Tony asks.

"Relay," Bruce answers, and expands the holographic model to show Tony its inner workings. "The big problem is that the energy trapped in these guns is way less stable than the Tesseract itself. Harder to focus and stabilize. This is a lot trickier to manipulate than what Selvig and I had on our hands, so everything he and I did there isn't helping me much here. The storage cells have a lot of output power, but the minute you fire them all together in one beam, the initial energy flare is too much to contain. The casing just can't hold it. It breaks through, and you've got a little bonfire on your hands for the next twenty seconds until the cells deplete and it all sputters out. But if you trigger them in sequence, staggering one through eleven so each one flares as soon as the last has stabilized, it _can_ be contained. That's what you're seeing in number eight. The design doesn't work, but there is one interesting little thing I want to show you."

He fires up the sim again, this time in slow motion, isolating one central beam. "As soon as I saw this, I remembered something Loki said to us all at that meeting back in New York. When he was describing the Tesseract, he said something about it being a 'semi-sentient' power source. I thought it was total crap at the time, but..." At a fraction of its full speed, a single beam from a single HYDRA cell begins to glow and expand. "Check it out. This beam is going to take almost fifteen seconds to stabilize, running the sim at one tenth speed. Watch what happens when the next few kick in. Eyes on the timer."

Just as Bruce promised, Jarvis clocks the first beam's stabilization at 14.7 seconds. Immediately, the next one kicks in, joining the first, though the timer tags its stabilization at 8.1 seconds. The third takes 6.8, the fourth 7.3, the fifth 7.8, the sixth 6.9: on they go, pulsing to life in sequence, all hovering around the seven-second mark. When the last evens out at 7.6, Tony can't help but shake his head in wonder.

"It's like they latch on to each other. The first beam braves the way, and the rest of them just follow in its wake down the path of least resistance, stabilizing in half the time."

Bruce nods. "Yeah, exactly. But weirder still, the energy is drawn to its own kind. I purposefully set these out of alignment on some tests I ran, just to see what would happen, and the beams actually curved their trajectories to join together. Up to almost twenty degrees, which is... extreme, to say the least."

"So why doesn't it work?" asks Tony, maybe stooping to stupid questions, but sometimes things just work out better if he thinks them through out loud. "Everything's aligned. It's all going according to plan. But no portal. The beams even out, and if we start them up in a controlled sequence they don't generate enough of a flare to blow through the casing. Staggering at point-nine seconds actual speed should give each one more than enough time to..."

Oh. Time. Right. That inconvenient little piece of reality knocks his train of thought off track before he can even finish the sentence. "It times out," he says instead, looking for confirmation of what he already knows to be true as he frowns at Bruce. Bruce nods while staring down at the computerized display. Shit. "We can't afford to waste that much time starting up the beam when the cells have only twenty seconds of continuous power in them in the first place. If we need a set window to grow the portal, and another for safe shutdown, we need to cut-"

"Minimum three seconds off the start-up," Bruce answers for him. "Though I'd feel safer with three and a half. So like I said... this is a neat observation, but it's still not where we need to be."

Maybe not, but they're close, and the feeling in Tony's gut says this new development will take them the rest of the way there. He's just missing something. One little tweak.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he rubs his hands over his face and presses his fingertips into his eyes. His skin feels sweaty and slick, and his head is still all wound up and off kilter. He needs coffee. And a shower. And more coffee. In that order.

"How about this," he says, looking up in time to catch Bruce trying to fend off a yawn. "I'll take over the night shift for a while. This gives me a lot to work with. See if I can come up with any way to cut down on the time. Play around with a few things. You catch a couple hours sleep, and we'll reconvene later."

"I'm not-" Bruce begins, but another yawn that he can't quite stifle in time slips out. And his shoulders sag in an admission of defeat. "Okay, now that I know what time it is, I'm exhausted. This is your fault. You shouldn't have told me. I'm going to bed, but I'll set my alarm for nine. Don't solve all the problems before I get back."

"I'll try not to," Tony answers with a wry smile, or at least part of one. Solve all the problems? Not likely. Not yet. Not with the way his head feels. And absolutely not with the sense of disappointment hanging heavily inside that he's still coming up just short of one crucial breakthrough.

ooo

Coffee. Then shower. But first coffee. Tony lasts a whole twenty minutes after Bruce's departure, which is twenty minutes of staring at screens and tech prints and 3D renderings. All of it makes his brain ache. Coffee. Yeah. Necessary. So he trudges up the stairs and into the kitchen and plants himself, elbows down, on the counter in front of the ridiculously complicated machine Pepper bought earlier in the year. One of those home barista piece of shit things that can make coffee every possible way under the sun except the way he likes it: plain swill, in a large pot, for ease of drinking five cups in quick succession.

One perfectly crafted cup at a time will have to do. He shoves his mug under the spout and watches as the thin trickle of dark brown liquid slowly pisses its way out, joined, once the mug is partially full, by an equally unappetizing dribble of milk half an inch to the side. It swirls and blooms in a cloud of creamy beige, expanding from middle to rim to fill the entire mug.

_Like the elusive space portal_, Tony thinks. _Growing from the beam of milk. How easy would life be if I could make a milk portal in a coffee mug? Though it probably wouldn't work because the pissing coffee and milk beams don't even line up. But... if they had the same properties as the Tesseract energy and one curved to meet the other..._

After that thought, seconds pass before he remembers to breathe again.

"Holy fuck."

He almost skids out as he takes a corner too fast, grabbing the edge of the wall to catch his balance as he charges down the hallway to Bruce's room. A more courteous person might knock before throwing the door open. But in Tony's experience, courtesy and major scientific breakthroughs generally don't go hand in hand.

"Bruce!" is all he can say once he's standing in the doorway of the darkened room. "Get up!"

Bruce fumbles for his glasses on the nightstand as he sits up. Then looks at the clock. "Tony... I haven't even been in bed for ten minutes. What did you do?!"

"The beams! Pepper's stupid coffee machine showed me!"

That explanation does nothing to alleviate Bruce's confusion. "...What?"

"They don't have to be in one casing! If you're right and the energy is attracted to itself, the beams will synchronize even if triggered from different points! As long as they're aimed at the same place!"

"You mean..."

"We've been stuck on trying to reconfigure Selvig's single-beam design, but what if we had eleven beams? I wrote this idea off at the get-go because I couldn't think of a way to bend the outputs into one merged line, but now that you've figured out they do that on their own... Eleven different casing! All beams converging into one before the portal initiation point! With eleven casings there's no need for a relay, and no containment danger with the initial energy flare!"

The expression of uncertainty doesn't even have time to fall from Bruce's face before he throws the covers back and jumps out of bed. "_Oh my god_."

"Jarvis!" Tony shouts, and he's already sprinting again back down the hallway with Bruce as close as a shadow on his heels. "Start a new project file! I want each energy cell in its own casing. Same device, same design, but replicate and decrease size for a single cell. Honeycomb layout. Focus all of them on a singular point, distance forty meters. How soon can we get a sim?"

"Rendering simulation now, sir," Jarvis calmly replies.

He takes the first four stairs to the workshop two at a time, which turns out to be a terrible idea when he almost loses his footing and risks crashing the rest of the way in a painful heap of dislocated limbs. He forces himself to slow down. One step at a time. Just one at a time. He's waited three months for this moment. He can wait another three seconds.

"Render complete," Jarvis announces as Tony jumps from the second-last step. "Running new simulation."

It looks like some kind of sci-fi cannon rising up in the holographic display: three rows of gun-barrel beamline casing units, one on top of the next, all aimed at a single pinprick of light a foot away at the far end of the display. As soon as Tony and Bruce reach the table, the new design sim begins to glow with energy.

And promptly explodes.

"Son of a..." Tony swears, cutting off the last word with a hard bite to his lip while Bruce responds with a dejected, though more polite, "Aww."

"I really thought that would work."

"So did I," says Bruce.

And so it will work. It has to work. If two smart guys say it's going to work? It's going to work. They just need to figure out how. An adjustment here. A realignment there. Tony prods the smouldering holographic debris with the end of a pen, watching digital smoke rise from the worktop.

"Okay," he says after a seconds-long pause. "This is the same problem we had before, right? It explodes. Too big of an energy flare at start-up. Maybe... the tight honeycomb pattern won't work. Maybe the initial flare is strong enough to break through the casing when in close proximity to others. The energy's trying to converge too soon and expands outward rather than in the intended beam. Jarvis? Revamp the layout. This time leave a minimum four hundred millimeters of space between each casing."

"Rendering new simulation now."

"You think that'll help?" Bruce asks, sounding sadly unconvinced after the last spectacular failure.

"Of course," Tony answers. "Yes. It will definitely, absolutely, beyond a doubt work this time."

He nods once to himself, that kind of purposeful, determined nod, when the new spiderweb of a design floats into being in front of him.

"Jarvis, trigger the centermost beam first. Once it's stabilized, send in the rest."

At Tony's side, Bruce quietly murmurs, "Fingers crossed."

Fingers, yes. Toes? Those too. Hell, if it would help this crazy mission succeed, Tony would willingly cross every available part of his body. But he settles for clenching his hands into fists as the central beam on the newest sim fires up like a lightsaber and shoots across the display. The other ten follow two seconds later.

At the end of the worktop, a miniature cloud of energy begins to grow. And solidify.

And the tiny holograph of a portal flickers to life.

ooo

"So you really want to go through with it."

Tony swirls his orange juice glass before speaking, watching pulpy liquid fingers slosh up the sides. "Yep."

Bruce's eloquent reaction to that is nothing more than a grunted, "Huh."

This is how they celebrate success: by sitting at the dining room table with a tray of OJ and Cheetos. The biggest scientific breakthrough since electricity waits right downstairs, and they're marking the momentous occasion with light snacks. There was elation, at one point. And there still is, on Tony's part. Bruce, though... Bruce stares down at his hands like he's in a trance, occasionally swallowing a yawn. For him, the rush of excitement has passed. Now he's back to where he was on the phone on Halloween. The same uncertain hesitancy creeps through his voice when he speaks.

"I only think..." he tries again.

"You think now that we've actually solved the problem of wormhole space travel we should stop here in the design phase?" Tony asks. "You don't want to move forward and watch this puppy in action?"

Careful. Bruce is too careful in his answer, handpicking words and forming them slowly, like they're nitroglycerine in his mouth. "No. I mean... Yes, I do want to see it in action. Of course I do. Eventually. I just... I think maybe, before you do anything big like trying to teleport yourself across the galaxy, you should... Tony, you should step back and think, _really think_, about why you're doing it."

"Because I want to go to Asgard. Isn't that a good enough reason?"

"But why do you want to go to Asgard?"

"Who wouldn't?"

"Tony..." Bruce groans.

"Bruce..." Tony returns.

"If this is just about Loki..."

With a frustrated grunt, Tony slams his glass down on the table. "Okay. It's about Loki. Is that what you want to hear? I admit it: I'm risking my life and rewriting the laws of physics for some guy I screwed, like, twenty times."

"You said you were only with him for nine days."

"Okay, so thirty times then. Whatever. The point is, I want to go to Asgard. And if Loki makes up ninety percent of the reason I have for going – the other ten percent being legitimate scientific curiosity, but let's not lie, it's mostly Loki – well... that's my problem. If I die in the process, it's my problem. If I miscalculate the portal and end up being sucked into a black hole, also my problem. But if give up now that I have this chance right in front of me, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. And that'll be an even bigger problem. He's really good at sex, Bruce."

Bruce groans. Full-out, drop-the-head-in-the-hands groans.

"I mean amazingly good."

"I don't want to know."

"My memory's a bit foggy but there's a high probability I accidentally told him I love him."

"Tony..."

"More than once."

"Tony."

"FYI, never sleep with a space wizard. It'll ruin your life."

"Okay, stop," Bruce snaps. "You're joking and being a smartass when-"

"You're surprised at this because?"

"_-when I'm trying to bring up a real concern_. I asked you why you wanted to go to Asgard because to me... you're acting kind of..." He doesn't say what. Just sighs. "You're sleeping badly, overtired, and, by your own admission, suffering from a mental..." He doesn't say 'breakdown', either. "You're not yourself. And I'm honestly worried you're doing this because that scepter Loki left behind is having some kind of negative effect on you."

"No."

That answer, that one word, comes out a lot louder than Tony means it to, and he winces at its blunt force as Bruce flinches away from him. "Sorry. But no. It's not." It's really not. Really. Not. "This has nothing to do with the scepter, and you know how I know that? Because I'd do the same thing if it were Pepper instead of Loki. If Pepper somehow ended up across the universe and I had a chance to find her? You damn well bet I'd try. If it were Rhodey? Or, for that matter, you? Or Steve? Or, hell, even Coulson or Natasha, because I'd probably feel bad and guilty even over them and want to set things right? I'd do it. You think I wouldn't do it?"

"No..." Bruce mutters, though that careful tone has shrouded his voice again.

"I know you don't like Loki," says Tony. "And I don't really expect you to because he's an evil fucking asshole, but if you knew him you'd know... um... that's just one of many equally horrible facets of his personality. But luckily, this isn't about you or what you think. It's about me and somebody I care about for reasons that... who knows. He's not always evil. Just occasionally. We spent a lot of time in Phoenix with him not being evil. It's different when it's just the two of us and maybe for a second we can both drop all the crazy bullshit we always carry around on our shoulders and..."

It's so hard, trying to explain these simple things. Thoughts that make so much sense in his head are impossible to articulate with Bruce's raised eyebrow staring him in the face like that, judging every poorly formed syllable that comes out of his mouth. Every weak argument.

"I'm going to Asgard, Bruce. If you don't like the idea of me doing this for Loki, then tell yourself it's for some nameless friend, or for pure science, and maybe that'll make it acceptable. But I'm going. It's the right thing to do, and I _know_ that, because the only time my conscience is at peace is when I'm working towards that goal. I have to go. Maybe you can at least understand that I _need _to go. It's a compulsion pushing me from inside and it won't let me stop. I can't stop, and can't give up, because the second I do I start to panic, thinking, what if I'm the only person who can do this? What if I'm the only one, and I give up, and then I've failed?"

"Okay," says Bruce, quiet and slow. He stands up as he speaks. Sets his glass back on the tray and sweeps aside a scattered mess of cheese crumbs from the table. Moments of stalling like he's working up courage before he opens his mouth again. "You know this is your own choice and I won't stand in the way. I promised to help, and I will, until the end. But just..." He lifts his hands, fingers picking nervously at one thumbnail. "Just promise me, in return, you'll think it through for at least two days before we go any further. Because the way you're talking? You _need_ to go? A compulsion _pushing_ you forward? You _can't_ give up? I want to make sure it's really you making this decision, and not something or somebody else making it for you."

Maybe the anger that ignites in Tony is irrational, but really, when you think about it, how often is anger really rational? Justified, sure, but rational? The feeling starts in the back of his neck, hot and tingling and a little like shame, before it seeps down through his bloodstream to invade his whole body. Makes his fists tighten. Makes his teeth clench. "And that's what you really think?" he asks. "That I'm... _possessed_ or something?!"

"I didn't say that. But..."

But the implication is pretty damn clear, and it only stokes Tony's anger. "But obviously, no matter what I say and how I try to explain myself, none of my reasons will ever be good enough to convince you I'm not crazy and this is really, one hundred percent, what _I_ want to do?!"

Bruce's voice is so calm despite the fidgeting of his hands. "I'm only trying to make sure. Before you go ahead with this, I only want to be sure that you're doing it for the right reasons, and you've thought about all the risks, and you're confident beyond even the tiniest doubt that it's the right choice. I just don't want to see any emotions or misplaced eagerness affecting your judgement, which is why I think we should wait on this a couple days at the very least. Things don't always end well when you're too quick to make yourself the test subject of unknown technology. Ask me how I know sometime."

He turns around before Tony has even half a second to respond, shoving his nervous hands deep down into the pockets of his pajama pants as he stalks away. Was that supposed to be some kind of guilt trip? Or just one more dire warning in a long string of bullshit dire warnings people have been throwing Tony's way lately?

Whatever the hell it was, it's not going to work. "It's been three months!" Tony shouts, though a door down the hall slams before the first word's out of his mouth. "I've been thinking about this for three months! If I haven't changed my mind in three months, I'm not going to do it now just because you're scared of your own shadow!"

Unsurprisingly, Bruce doesn't answer.

Tony picks up his juice glass just to slam it down on the table again, wishing it would break in his hand. It doesn't. Juice slops over the side.

What an act of rebellion. He's a true badass.

But it's been three months. Three months by himself, alone every night. Three months of Loki existing only as a memory: a persistent splinter stuck in his imagination, impossible to remove even if Tony wanted to. (He doesn't.) Three months of loose ends and unfinished business. Uncertainty. Worry. Fear. Obsession. Three long, uninterrupted months of struggling to sleep every night and crawling restless out of bed every morning. Day after day of a singular thought pounding through his head.

_I need to get to Asgard._

Is it even a choice any more?

"Jarvis?" he asks.

"Yes, sir?"

It's time. "Start the build. The design is finalized. Get the beamline components shaped first, let me know when they're ready for assembly, then start on the bracing structure. I want this thing ready to go ASAP."


	2. Should've Taken that Left Turn

Desert. In all directions. Nothing but desert. Dirt and sand and scrubby little plants as far as the eye can see. Somewhere off to the left is the ghost town of Puente Antiguo, but it's hidden out of sight behind a rise in the landscape as Tony pulls the Jeep to a stop on a flat, gritty plain and jumps out to do a quick visual survey of the location.

Yep, middle of nowhere. Perfect place to shoot off an experimental interplanetary teleportation beam without any nosy neighbors getting in the way.

"So..." says Bruce, following Tony's lead and climbing out of his seat. "I think we should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque."

Over the hood of the Jeep, Tony shoots Bruce a look, accompanied by the kind of groan people usually make when hit by bad jokes. "Exactly how long have you been waiting to say that?"

Bruce's answer comes with a sheepish smile. "Um... Since we crossed the New Mexico border..."

"Uh-huh," says Tony. But he grins just the same, because that's the first light-hearted thing Bruce has said in five days. It's not much, but it's a hell of a lot better than the polite, professional, and awkwardly distant way they've been treating each other lately.

The friendly spark is short lived, though. They unload the equipment largely in silence, Tony offering a few directions of 'that one first' or 'over here' when Bruce asks which case goes where, but little more. Five aluminum trunks house the dismantled pieces of the portal device. Two more hold everything Tony plans on taking with him to Asgard: all the necessities of his life crammed into a little less than six cubic feet. There's his Mark VII armor, neatly folded away and ready to go. And then one last case. Smaller than the rest, about three feet long by seven inches wide by four inches tall, Tony waits until Bruce is well out of sight range and busy unpacking before he undoes its clasps.

Loki's scepter sits inside, nestled safely on a bed of custom-shaped foam. The S.H.I.E.L.D. logo hovers above it, stamped into a round plate on the inside of the lid.

He hasn't looked at it in weeks. Once, when he first started on his designs for the portal beam, he opened the case and looked at the scepter. But only once.

He hasn't touched it since that day on the roof in New York.

He glances up, tilting his head to peer through the Jeep's windshield over at Bruce, who's now kneeling in the dirt and arranging pieces in a line. Well, might as well get this over with as soon as possible. Tear off the Band-Aid, face the demons, cross the bridge and all that jazz. So, slowly, trying not to let his hand shake too much, he reaches down. His fingertips slide around the smooth, golden handle.

That's all that's needed for its bright energy to fly up his arm and flood his brain. One little touch, and suddenly he can _feel_ again. He _knows_ again. His eyes are wide open to all the secrets of the world, and he can breathe in deeply, savoring the taste of power and certainty in the air that fills his lungs. It's not as strong as he remembers – has the scepter faded in Loki's absence, or have Tony's own abilities grown to the point where he no longer notices such a striking difference? – but it's there nonetheless. He can sense Bruce's focus on the task of assembling their device, prickling out from a point just ahead. He can feel the incomplete, broken remnants of lives still caught in the wreckage of the empty town a mile and a half to the north-west. And he can almost _see_ the shimmering outline of the Bifrost's footprint in a wide circle to his right.

It's there. Right there. That's where he needs to initialize the portal. He paces out to the middle of the circle, letting the scepter guide him, until he stands at its exact center. At his back, he knows Bruce is looking up from the pile of bolts and braces to stare at him in apprehension.

"Here," he calls, before Bruce has a chance to say anything. "I want the portal to open here. Do you have the range finder? Measure out forty meters from where I'm standing and we'll set up the beam casing at that point." Stepping back, he pulls a pen out of his pocket and sticks it down into the dirt, marking the place.

"That, um..." Bruce starts. "That... scepter... help you find the right spot?"

Tony nods. He could feel it before, and he knew they were close, but now he has the exact location. This is where the Bifrost last touched Earth. Residual energy still haunts this place. He saw its effect on Loki when they were here nearly four months ago, but now he can feel it for himself. Pushing and pulling, distorting the atmosphere... the air feels thinner here, like there's something missing. Something has been taken away. It's full of holes.

He can't reopen the Bifrost, but maybe, just maybe, he can hitch a ride on the tail of its dwindling comet. Maybe this little suggestion of lingering magic will be enough.

"This should work, shouldn't it?" Tony asks as he starts back over towards Bruce. "We've already seen how the Tesseract energy latches on to its own kind. No reason to think it won't connect with the Bifrost energy too, right?"

Bruce pushes his glasses up from where they'd slipped down the bridge of his nose. "Uh..."

"I mean, my understanding of how these portals work is that the energy is directed by the will of whoever is controlling it. That's why the first portal device worked for Loki, but not Selvig. Loki could 'talk' to the Tesseract, while Selvig couldn't. So assuming that I can get a portal to open at all – which I think I can, because we're dealing with extracted Tesseract teleportation energy rather than the Cube itself – I need something a little better than my own mental power to make sure it goes to Asgard. Instead of, I don't know, Monte Carlo or somewhere. So my guess is if we initialize the portal exactly where the Bifrost last touched, where the barrier between Asgard and Earth is at its thinnest, the portal will pick up on that. It'll naturally recreate a bridge where one has previously existed. Makes sense?"

If Bruce has anything to say in reply to that, he keeps it to himself and instead just repeats, "Uh."

"Yeah," Tony says with a nod. "Makes sense." The scepter, pulsing warm in his hand, seems to agree.

"Don't look at me for reassurance. This is now so far out of my realm of experience that I'm just the hired help. Here to assemble the hardware and drive your Jeep back to Malibu once you..." A forced little cough. Bruce looks down. "Once you go."

His demeanor has changed. Tony didn't see it at first but he can now. It's plainly on display, shining out from Bruce's skin: he may not completely agree with Tony's decision, but at least he accepts it. "So you're done trying to talk me out of this," says Tony. Not a question. An observation.

Bruce nods without looking up. "I'm not going to be able to change your mind. And you know what... I'm starting to think it's not fair of me to try. I've been thinking about that for the past few days and it suddenly seemed a bit hypocritical for me to be telling you what to do when I've spent the last seven years running away from everyone who was trying to do that to me. You should do what you want. Go to Asgard. Maybe I can't understand your reasons for going, but... I guess I _can_ understand that you need to go."

Wordlessly, Tony holds out his hand, which Bruce takes, using it to pull himself to his feet. He holds on a heartbeat longer than necessary. And only lets go after a conspiratorial squeeze.

"Thank you," Tony quietly tells him.

"This doesn't mean I agree with what you're doing."

"Still. You're helping me out here. Way more than helping, actually, since it was your discovery that led to the final design coming together. And I know you don't agree, which makes me appreciate your help even more. So. Thank you."

Bruce mumbles something under his breath that sounds like it might be a 'you're welcome' muddled up with the uncertain, embarrassed grunt of somebody who isn't entirely comfortable with either compliments or gratitude. "Let's just get going before I come to my senses and realize continuing to help you is a really, really bad idea."

ooo

This may be an ideal location, but in early November the exposed wind-magnet of a landscape sure doesn't make for an ideal climate once the sun starts to dip down below the horizon. Six hours. That's how long it takes to assemble all the equipment. Six hours of numb fingers that keep fumbling with tools, interspersed with scant minutes huddled over a coffee thermos for a quick break. By the end they're forced to work in the piercing glare and hard shadows cast by the Jeep's headlights, bolting this and leveling that and, finally, wiring in the battery that will start everything up and get this show on the road.

With his armor on and the two cases he plans to take to Asgard at his sides, Tony stands in front of the finished product with an underwhelming sense of... what, exactly? Not disappointment. But not excitement, either. Maybe mild satisfaction, but that's still not quite right. There should be more, shouldn't there? After all those months, his project is complete, and he's about to tear a shortcut through space to the other side of the universe. He should feel more than just this vague sense of contentment. There should be more than simple, accomplished pride flowing from his mind, down his arm, and into the scepter (which answers back with a half-voiced vote of confidence: _Yes_, it seems to say, _you should be proud of this moment. You're finally here, as I always knew you would be_.)

"Does this feel weird to you?" Tony asks.

Bruce, leaning against the side of the Jeep, answers immediately. "Uh-huh."

"No I mean," Tony clarifies, "I should probably be jumping out of my skin with excitement right now. Shouldn't I? I'm about to go to a different _planet_. But this kind of feels like... I don't know... normal, everyday trip to Aspen for the weekend kind of thing. Does it feel like that to you?"

"No. I'm a lot closer to jumping out of my skin from weirdness." Bruce takes a couple steps back. "Actually, I should stay over here while you fire that thing up. In case of... occurrences."

Right. Occurrences. But at least he's got a good place for it, out here in the middle of the desert with a whole smashed-up town nearby to smash up further.

"Probably wise," says Tony. "Anyway: game plan. I'm about to get things going. Power starts up, beam comes on, portal initializes. As soon as it's stable, I grab these two cases here and fly. Once I'm through I'll wave or set off flares or something so you know I've made it safely and didn't die on the very short journey to the other side of space. Then? All you have to do is wait for the cells to burn out and the portal closes on its own. And you head home. Easy as pie. You can pack up if you want, but you know what would be easier? Leave all this junk here, but tell Coulson where it is and what it does. He'll come confiscate it for you."

"That's not funny," Bruce mutters.

"Yes it is."

"It's not funny, because as soon as S.H.I.E.L.D. finds out what you did – and Tony, they're going to find out –they'll be all over _me_ to explain. What am I supposed to tell them?"

Loki's scepter all but pulls Tony's eyes down to his hand. "You can always tell them I Bartoned you."

"Okay, _that's_ not funny."

"It's kind of funny."

"No, it isn't."

Well, Bruce has an underdeveloped sense of horribly offensive humor. Tony lets it drop. "You at a safe watching distance? I think it's time to start this thing up."

On this machine, there's none of that safety code crap Selvig built into the original portal device. This one's nice and simple: one button to activate start-up, and a switch to fire up the beamline relay. Tony flicks the first, watching as the panel lights begin to glow and listening to the beam casings buzz with power. And then...

_We're coming_, the scepter whispers as his right hand rises to the beamline switch.

Tony silently nods to himself. _Yes. We're coming. It's time._

_Asgard, _says the scepter. _You must to think of Asgard. Beyond the stars. Across space and time. A golden city. Where we belong. Clear your head. Can you see it?_

He lowers his helmet's visor and closes his eyes. The image is small, but it's distinct and sharp, framed in his memory. Tony saw it before, through the portal Loki opened on the deck of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s helicarrier. In the center of a misty, hollow cloud, a wave of golden spires rises above the glittering hill of a city. Flashes of stars crown its peak. _Asgard..._

No sight needed for his hand to find the beamline switch, smooth and sure. No need to hesitate or overthink as he turns it ninety degrees clockwise.

_Asgard. Golden Asgard. Gleaming towers cloaked in radiance. Asgard. Floating fortress in a sea of stars. Asgard. Eternal light and glory._

The first narrow beam rips through the air like the crack of a whip. The other ten follow after a moment's pause and with an engine's roar. At twenty meters, all the strands of electric blue energy merge into one. At forty, at the center of the Bifrost's circle that Tony marked, a small, dark cloud begins to waver and solidify and grow.

It's smaller than either of Loki's portals, stabilizing at just over three feet across, but there's no denying the sight on the other side. A shining city. A glassy bridge. And if Tony has any doubts in that moment... He doesn't give himself a chance to listen to any of them. As soon as the portal opens he's in the air, shooting out along the side of the beamline to the cases he has ready to go: clamped together, handle up. His fingers close around metal in one flawlessly choreographed movement. The cases lift off the ground, he's flying on, and the portal lies just ahead...

He instinctively braces himself against the rush of nausea and bodily disorientation he's come to associate with teleportation. It doesn't come. He doesn't even think to prepare himself for any other possible side effect. Like the sudden, searing flash of heat that explodes through his body the instant he touches the portal.

White-hot and sizzling with the smell of ozone, it hits him square in the chest and then engulfs him whole, armor and all, down to the very last innermost molecule. The suit fails first, before his brain even has a chance to process what's happening. Power shuts down in the right arm, and the right leg. Critical failure flashes in a red warning across the display in front of his eyes, but only for a second and then that, too, crackles and dies in a puff of smoke that stinks of burnt plastic and wire. Blinded, he crashes shoulder first with a painful crunch into ground as hard as steel. Rolls twice. Smashes his head against the cases still clenched in his immobile right fist. Skids to a stop. Can't sit up.

_Fuck._

Something's still burning. The suit's still burning. Something, somewhere, sparks and smokes and fills his helmet with fumes that sting his eyes and lungs. Shit, _fuck_, and he can't sit and the power's gone and everything down the entire right side has seized up in what smells and feels like an anarchic mess of ruined circuitry... But the left arm works. Not easily, functioning now like nothing more than a clumsy metal sleeve with no robotic support, but at least Tony can jerkily pull his left hand up to his face to swat away his visor. It clatters to the ground as he gulps in, and coughs on, breath after breath of cool, clean air.

"_Tony!_"

He can hear his name. So faint, like it's being shouted through a barrier of water.

"_Tony!_"

His voice comes out as a hoarse croak. "Bruce..." He lifts his left arm as high as he can in an awkward wave, hoping like hell that'll at least be enough to be seen through the portal and signal to Bruce he's alive. Singed and trapped in his own armor, but alive, which is a damn sight better than where he could be. He listens for any reply, but the only answer is the hiss of wind and the rush of what sounds like a waterfall somewhere nearby. The portal must have closed.

He hopes Bruce saw him before it did.

The suit's automatic release controls are fucked, but Tony's left hand fumbles its way over to the manual release levers at his chest and waist on either side. The breastplate pops loose with the sound of something snapping (that can't be good) and another whiff of acrid, black smoke (probably even worse). _Shit_. _Shit shit shit_. Except this is no time to lie around feeling sorry for himself and his ruined armor, so he shoves all those worries aside to deal with later and focuses instead on freeing his arms and legs. The left side is easy enough. The right takes a little more effort, twisting and forcing his way out of the broken metal shell. But at least then he can sit up, pull off his helmet, and do a quick assessment of bodily damage.

Miraculously, there's not much. The hair on his right arm has been scorched off near the elbow where the wiring caught fire. His shirt has burned away in a wide hole surrounding the arc reactor, though his skin in both places is only slightly reddened, no worse than a sunburn. The arc reactor itself seems unaffected. It's hot to the touch and streaked with melted shirt, but other than that bit of cosmetic damage, there's nothing to indicate it's not functioning normally.

So. Suit destroyed, but body okay. Tony can live with that. As in, he'll have to live with that, because he doesn't have much of a choice, but it's not the worst possible outcome for this scenario. He made it to Asgard in one relatively unscathed piece.

The sense of excitement/panic/terror/overwhelming uncertainty/crushing disbelief that failed to hit him before he left? It sure doesn't hold back now, wrenching his gut with the sudden reality of the situation. Absurd reality. Impossible reality. He made it to Asgard. The portal worked. Everything worked. _He made it to Asgard._

"Holy shit," he murmurs to himself. And he needs to pause for a second, and take the time to say that name aloud. To feel its weight and shape on his tongue.

"_Asgard_."

ooo

Maybe, in the interest of preparedness, Tony should've thought a little more (and a little more realistically) about what exactly he'd _do_ once he reached Asgard. With most of his plan focusing on the problem of just getting here in the first place, everything else kind of fell by the wayside, relegated to a few indulgent and embarrassing fantasies in which Tony Stark, legendary Earth hero, is received by the people of Asgard with ringing cheers and a shower of rose petals. They give him priceless golden treasures for some reason. He advises a council of venerable battle wizards on the topic of intergalactic politics. He climbs to the highest room in the tallest tower (or the lowest cell in the deepest dungeon, he's not picky) and comes across the tragic figure of Loki, whom he rescues in a daring ploy. Thor's family applauds him for his courage and loyalty even though this makes no sense at all given that they were the ones to put Loki in the tower/dungeon in the first place. But it plays well onscreen.

There are probably a lot of different things Tony should have considered, but didn't. Simple things. Things like, 'Can humans breathe the air in Asgard?' (Answer: essentially yes, though it seems to have a different oxygen content and atmospheric composition than Earth air, because it's making him a little light-headed.) Things like, 'What time zone is Asgard in, and do they even have twenty-four hour days?' (Answer: that's still a mystery, though from the black sky overhead, Tony's starting to suspect he arrived at the Asgardian equivalent to three in the morning.) Things like, 'What the hell do I even say to Thor?' (Answer: probably not, 'Surprise, I'm here to undermine your authority by asking you to reverse any decisions made in regards to Loki's fate and punishment.')

Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. For now though, it's not like he can do much of anything other than go with the flow. And the flow is telling him to smarten up and make himself as presentable as possible, because he's about to have company.

Company on horseback. A few hundred feet away, at the end of the gleaming crystal road Tony landed on, a vast metal gate is yawning its way open to allow a small group of riders through. Ten, maybe. In the dark at that distance Tony can't count for sure, but however many there are, they're approaching fast. He grabs a fresh and not-burnt-to-shit shirt out of the meager collection of clothes he brought along, and just manages to pull it on and snap the lid of the case shut as the Asgardian Nazgûl come pounding to a stop within literal spitting distance. Nine in total. How fitting.

At the forefront of them all is Thor. And for reasons he can't quite explain, the sight of Thor jumping down from that horse makes Tony's shoulders sag with relief while his stomach simultaneously knots in apprehension.

"Tony Stark."

Tony stands a little straighter as Thor strides forward, barging right into his personal space until the two of them stand less than a handspan apart. Thor glares down from his unfair height advantage. Tony stares right back up. "Hey."

"Heimdall informed me of your attempts to open a portal. We did not believe you would succeed."

Heimdall... Tony's heard that name before, but can't place when or how. "Always full of surprises, aren't I?"

"How did you arrive here?" Thor demands.

"You don't sound too happy to see me," Tony replies, but it's one of those bullshit things you flippantly throw out at people when you're at a loss for anything better to say. Because the knot in his stomach has started to twist, and he has bad feeling about whatever's about to happen next.

Scowling as he turns his head to look at his horsemen, Thor is very obviously biting back whatever words sit at the ready in his throat. He pulls off his helmet and tucks it under his arm. But it's not a gesture of confidence or familiarity. More like a gesture of wanting to show exactly how pissed off he is that he needs his whole damn frown-marred face on full display. "You should not have come," is what he eventually settles on saying.

"Yeah, people keep telling me that."

"You cannot stay."

Tony nods. "I didn't really plan to." Which is technically the truth, because he honestly hasn't planned anything other than the part where he finds Loki.

"Then why are you here?"

"Can't you guess?" asks Tony.

Thor can guess. He doesn't say so out loud, but the way his eyes narrow, and the way his lips tighten... He can guess. Probably doesn't even need to guess. He just knows.

"Okay, look," Tony tries. "Let me start by apologizing for just showing up out of the blue like this. But to be fair, you didn't really leave me with a way to contact you to warn that I'm coming. No phone, no email, no... do you guys have carrier pigeons? Communication between our realms is kind of sketchy, isn't it? But I don't remember you giving Earth any kind of warning before you beamed down last time. You Twilight Zoned your way onto S.H.I.E.L.D.'s jet, and then – I don't know if you remember this, but I sure do – immediately attacked me with that hammer of yours. So in comparison? I think I'm being pretty considerate here, arriving quietly on this... uh..." He glances down from one end of the crystal road to the other, from the city's gate at the far end to the jagged shards and abrupt drop off the edge of the world, close to where he first landed. "Space dock. Yeah. This is me being polite. And I think you could extend the same courtesy. When you were on Earth, I let you into my home, bought you tacos, and let you wear my old pants. I was more than civil to you. How about you do the same for me?"

"Those were different circumstances," growls Thor, who doesn't seem to be in any kind of mood for negotiation. Or having his honor questioned. "I only came to your world to find Loki and-"

"Not a different circumstance. In fact, that's the exact same circumstance. 'Find Loki and.' Which part of my vaguely implied reason for showing up on your front step didn't you get just now?"

Thor growls again, this time without words: just a rumbled warning from somewhere deep inside.

"Maybe you could at least give me the opportunity to explain myself and make my case," Tony suggests. "It's not like I'm asking for permanent residency or wanting to build a summer house. I only want you to hear me out."

From his stance, it's clear that Thor is weighting the options in his mind. Option one would be to actually humor Tony and listen to whatever it is he's come to say (not that Tony knows what that's going to be yet, but hey, he'll think of something). Option two would be tossing Tony off the end of the space dock and being done with it. Thor shifts his weight from one foot to the other, huffing to himself, because apparently this is a really tough decision.

"Please?" Tony asks.

Thor goes for option three. "I will consider your request," he says.

And that's good enough for Tony, since consideration implies spending time, which means nobody's getting packed off back to where they came from in the immediate future. He tries not to smile too widely at this small triumph.

"Tomorrow," Thor continues. "I will consult with my father, and we will decide your fate. Until then, you are right, Tony Stark. I do owe you the same hospitality you one afforded me. Come."

And that's how Tony arrives in the golden realm. Maybe not according to plan, as he's quietly spirited through the streets by an armed escort, but it'll have to do. There are no crowds. No roses. No public announcement, no official greeting. None of that storybook crap. But in the grand scheme of things, can he really complain? He's in Asgard. He made it this far. Thor might not be too happy about it, but that still doesn't change the fact that Tony's _here_. And he's not about to give up until he gets what he came for.

Asgard's stuck with him now.


	3. A Plague of Lokis

He can't sleep in Asgard, either.

It must have been naïve hope that maybe his insomnia would be solved simply by setting foot on Asgardian soil. Just like magic, just like that. He climbed into bed without a second thought, sliding between slippery-satin sheets to press his face into the oversized pillow, and closed his eyes. And waited. And waited. And rolled onto his back. And stared up at the knotwork pattern of criss-crossing beams in the ceiling. And rubbed his temples, and pressed his fingers into his gritty eyes until he saw stars, and strained his ears listening to distant sounds that might have been birds of prey or wolves or a strange new creature right out of folklore and imagination... but all those things did sweet fuck all. Tony can't sleep. Can't even lie still. He keeps tossing and rolling and shifting position, back to side to front to side to diagonally across the bed with his arms wrapped over his head and the blankets in a snarl around his knees.

If anything, this feels worse than trying to sleep on any of those restless nights back home. There's too much energy in this room. In this whole place. The entire city, the entire _realm_, from the moment Tony arrived, felt different than Earth, and now that he's alone in bed with too much time on his hands and too many thoughts assailing his mind, he knows why. The energy is stronger. It's clearer and more vibrant, as if the air here conducts it more readily than the air on Earth. All those tiny connections that Loki once told him about are so much more substantial. Even without the scepter in his hand, he can feel the presence of the guards outside his door. There are four of them. He can sense somebody walking past in the hallway. Bodies in the rooms above his, beside his, below his... People all across the city, waking up with the slowly rising sun, flickering into action like sparks becoming flames.

"Fucking assholes," Tony mutters to himself. Their stupid, cloying energy is giving him the queen bitch of all headaches.

How does somebody like Loki even deal with this? It's like trying to live with a bright light constantly glaring in his eyes and something loud and repetitive buzzing in his ears, and no chance of relief. Is he supposed to work up a tolerance after a while? Or just stop noticing it? Learn to tune it out?

Whatever the case, sleep isn't going to happen any time soon. So he climbs out of bed with a grunt, pulls on his pants from the floor, and pads barefoot over to the table where a pitcher of water waits. Fills a glass... or rather, some kind of decorative metal tankard. Asgard apparently does nothing by half measures. It's full-out Viking or nothing around here. And water from a metal cup tastes weird. At least he assumes it's water? Probably one of those things he should have checked up on before he arrived: does Asgard have water, and is it the same as Earth water?

At least the room they stuck him in is nice. Sparse but elegant, like some modernist spa. Large, easily sixty feet across and nearly as many deep, with floor and walls made of a highly polished material in a rich, coppery brown. He can't tell whether it's metal or stone or a curious man-made hybrid of both. The high, vaulted ceiling arches into the center of the room where heavy chains hang a sweeping metallic sculpture that's probably a lighting fixture. It was glowing dull orange when the guards first brought Tony into the room, but it's dark now and nobody bothered to show him how to turn it on. There's a separate bathroom off to the side, which probably has running water, because it has some kind of spout over some kind of bath tub. But no visible faucet taps. And no discernible toilet. Maybe one of those fountain-looking things is a toilet, but Tony decided to play it safe upon arrival and just took a leak in the tub.

He should probably feel embarrassed about that. But seriously, if nobody's going to take the time to show him how to use his space bathroom, they can't really blame him for misuse of the facilities.

Over in the corner, somebody's stacked up his armor in a pile of broken pieces. The aluminum cases sit beside it, along the wall. He might have enough spare parts in case two to fix things up. Not perfectly, and not fully, but he might have enough to at least get the suit back in working order; he anticipated having to make a few small repairs when he packed. And okay, so this qualifies as a lot more than 'small repairs', but maybe once he takes the time to examine the extent of the damage he'll be able to figure out a way to get it back together.

The scepter's stuffed inside case one with his clothes and some tools. It's as loud as any of the people in this damn place, boldly announcing its presence. _It_ gives him a headache more than any other single thing he can pinpoint. Like a dog barking. Pointless noise.

He flips the case open and, careful not to touch it himself, picks up the scepter with a pair of pliers and a looped t-shirt. Then carries it into the bathroom and dumps it behind one of the fountains. Better. Sort of. It's hard to tell if putting any more distance between himself and the scepter does any actual good, but at least the solid wall separating them acts as a good mental barrier. He can pretend its obnoxious energy is less noticeable when he shuts the bathroom door behind him.

And then what? If he makes an educated guess based on the dim, pinkish light filtering through the flimsy curtains that separate his bedroom from a wide balcony, it's still early morning. Thor gave no indication of what time they might meet for their friendly little chat. After breakfast? After lunch? Do they have breakfast and lunch here? Tony's pretty sure he remembers Thor using the word 'breakfast' in Atlantic City, but that doesn't prove anything. 'Breakfast' could be a concept he picked up during his first little jaunt down to Earth.

So Tony hauls a few key pieces of the armor out to the balcony, because if he's going to waste time waiting around until Thor comes to fetch him, he might as well waste it while getting something done. And he might as well get something done in a spot with a nice view. No: make that 'spectacular' view. 'Unbelievable view, like something off the cover of a sci-fi paperback', even.

Loki's description of Asgard slips back into the forefront of his mind as he stands at the stone balustrade, absently rubbing at his helmet's charred faceplate. 'Organic', Loki had called it. Flowing lines and seamless transitions, shapes inspired by forests and mountains and seas... It wasn't the easiest thing to picture while staring out over the square Lego-land of New York City, but now that he's here, now that he can _see_ it, Tony would have trouble describing Asgard in any other way. Off to the right, asymmetrical towers rise with the curvature of a vast, alien spine. Lopsided pyramids ripple in waves against the hazy dawn horizon to the left. Walls turn into buildings that turn into needle-thin spires, following the unpredictable path of a river to the craggy edge of this flat world and its cloak of stars. All of it shines with a supernatural glow... Is that real, or is it a trick of the light reflecting off bright surfaces as smooth as glass?

He glances down at his mask. The gold alloy remains stubbornly dull, even where his thumb's rubbed away a clean circle above the eye on the right side. No glow. No magic. It looks, almost for a second, depressingly primitive.

Somewhere out in this alien city, Loki is waiting. Too far or too hidden to locate precisely, even with the scepter... which Tony certainly tried. But he's here. So close now. Loki's here.

ooo

Thor appears at noon, or whatever the Asgardian equivalent to noon is. Tony was expecting a summons, and maybe even the spectacle of being escorted through the palace to a grand throne room so he could stand on display for all the land to see and cower before the king. But this works too. Thor arrives with two servants bearing food and drink, and immediately proceeds to make himself comfortable at the little table near the balcony door.

"Tony Stark," he says with a single dip of his head.

Tony replies with a casual, "Hey," as if they're friends once again, back home on Earth, sitting down to a nice, relaxing lunch because whatever problem Thor had with him last night no longer exists. He joins Thor at the table. The servants pour them wine, then silently depart. There's bread and meat and cheese and fruit and little cakes and some kind of steaming, tea-looking drink in a ceramic pitcher. It's all very cozy.

For this friendly little meeting, Thor's not wearing his signature armor. Just a normal, everyday, around-the-house flowing knee-length red vest covered in what has to be at least ten pounds of decorative metal. With some kind of silky gunmetal gray sarong underneath, tied around his waist. No pants. Tony's not surprised. And it makes him feel a bit better about his decision to wear sweats and an impromptu scarf made of half-untangled spare wire. Though, on second thought, maybe it would be polite to take off the wires. Yeah.

He sets the tangle-scarf aside before reaching for a bread roll. "So."

"Mm," Thor replies through a mouthful of meat. Then, once he's swallowed, "Is the room to your liking? Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah, room's great," says Tony, because answering one of those two questions is good enough for smalltalk. No need to whine about the other. "Very... uh..." He turns around in his chair to take it all in, bed to balcony. "Very Naboo chic."

Thor nods as if that makes any sense at all. "Mm."

"It's spacious. Nice open concept. Great view from the balcony."

"Yes."

"I have no idea how to use the bathroom or turn on the lights."

"No?" Thor asks, looking up as he takes another bite. Apparently talking with your mouth full passes for good table manners in these parts. "Shall I show you?"

"...Maybe we eat first. Then bathroom exploration."

"Of course."

"Your dad joining us today?"

And with that, Thor's energy changes. Something spikes inside him, no longer flat but jagged and irregular. His posture changes with it. He sits up straighter. Stiff. Formal. This time, he swallows before even starting to speak. And is that an awkward, uncertain pause?

"No," he says carefully, drawing the word out a beat longer than he should. "I spoke with my father this morning. As your presence here is a result of my actions on Midgard, he has charged me with finding a solution to the problem."

_Problem?_ Tony catches himself before he repeats the word back at Thor, but he bristles at it just the same.

"There are many things we must discuss. But..." Thor gestures to the table. "Please, eat first."

Right, because eating is exactly what Tony wants to do after having been labeled a problem by the guy who supplied the food. They're off to a great start already. But he stuffs a wedge of cheese into his mouth anyway because at least that gives him an excuse not to have to say anything. He follows it up with a few bites of meat, which is annoyingly tender and perfectly seasoned, and half an egg. Then a swig of wine, which flows far too smoothly down his throat in a long stream before the full strength of it hits him smack in the face.

"Oh," he hisses, trying not to cough. "That's not wine. Or if it is, it's like... ninety proof wine..."

"Tony Stark, are you-"

He waves Thor off. "Yeah yeah. Yeah. I'll be fine. I've drunk way worse in my day. I just wasn't expecting that. At all. Usually I don't, you know, throw back a giant mouthful of hard liquor. Okay, I mean, I do, but when I do, it's intentional."

"It's cherry wine," says Thor, taking a healthy swig of his own.

Sure, that explains everything... Tony lifts the cup (metal tankard, of course) to his nose, inhaling the earthy scent of the wine. Smells a little cherry-like. Also smells way more innocent than it actually is, but a second, less enthusiastic sip confirms what he first discovered. "This isn't cherry wine, it's cherry brandy. It's a mom drink."

"Yes," Thor agrees. "It's one of my mother's favorites."

"That wasn't supposed to be a-" _compliment_, Tony finishes in his head. "Never mind. Let's just get this over with. What, exactly, did you and your father discuss? Gimme the good news. I'm assuming I've been granted honorary citizenship here in your realm of myth and magic by virtue of my unparalleled intelligence, brash new world charm, and stunning good looks?"

Tony's starting to suspect that Thor doesn't really understand anything he says. Or, if he does understand, he doesn't pay attention. "My father," Thor starts, but stops right after the words leave his tongue. He looks down it his plate, takes a breath, and tries again. Nothing comes.

"Maybe you can start with telling me why you were so... _displeased_ is a nice, neutral word. Why you were so _displeased_ to see me last night."

Another little breath, and Thor shifts in his seat. "Your arrival took us all by surprise. Heimdall had informed us of your attempts to recreate Loki's space hole, but-"

"Quick warning," Tony interrupts, "but if you continue to say things like 'Loki's space hole', I don't know how seriously I'll be able to take this conversation."

Thor frowns, clearly confused.

"It's distracting," says Tony.

"But why-"

"Please don't think about it. And say _portal_. Loki's _portal._ Even though that's now starting to sound a little... Just tell me the rest of the story. Scientific language. No space holes."

"Heimdall informed us of your progress, but we did not believe you would find any success. So when your device worked... We in Asgard have long prided ourselves in the security and safety of our realm. Few have ever breached our borders, and those who have done so did not live long enough to brag of their exploits."

"So you have a kill-all-intruders kind of policy going on?" Tony asks, trying to keep things light despite a distinct sense of foreboding as to where this might be headed. "Yet I note you're graciously allowing me to live." _I hope._ "What gives?"

"I have managed to convince my father you are not an enemy and pose no risk."

"Right. So I guess it's a good thing I was too overwhelmed by stuff going wrong last night to remember the classic 'take me to your leader' line you're supposed to use when you land on an alien planet. Sounds like he would've executed me on the spot."

Thor neither confirms nor denies that, instead carrying on with what he thinks they should talk about. "No-one believed humans possessed either the technology or the ability to open a _portal_." He accentuates that last word. Good.

"But humans don't have that technology," Tony counters. "_I_ have it. It was a one-hit wonder, made by myself and my lovely assistant, Dr. Bruce Banner. I'm the only one who has it, I'm the only one who knows how to use it, and I'm the only one who _can _use it. So if you're worried about a bunch of tourists suddenly showing up, let me put your mind at ease. This technology is not available to the general public. Richard Branson isn't about to start offering daily jaunts to Asgard on Virgin Intergalactic any time soon."

"You would swear to this?" Thor asks. "No other person on Midgard possesses this knowledge?"

"Bruce has the designs, and, in theory, the ability to build a second portal device or revitalize the one I used. But he doesn't know _how_ to use it." _And he doesn't have the scepter_. But Tony keeps that thought to himself, reluctant as he suddenly is to let Thor in on his little secret. If this Heimdall guy made no mention of the scepter, he's damn well not going to bring it up now. "Nor would he want to use it. I can guarantee that."

"Would you stake your life on it?"

"Is that really necessary?"

The grim expression on Thor's face says yeah, it is. Asgardians take their closed border seriously.

"Sure, why not," Tony sighs. "Though I'd feel a lot better staking a couple fingernails. Maybe a big toe. You guys that worried about an invasion from Earth? Is that a campfire legend or something here? People on earth used to worry about an invasion from Mars, though I'm pretty sure that fear was based on a fascination with H.G. Wells more than, you know, actual reasonable thought."

"If you give your word that no one from Midgard will attempt to follow you or recreate what you have done," says Thor, "my father is willing to accept your presence."

"Apart from Bruce, nobody on Midgard knows I'm even here."

Thor nods, making a sound in his throat that sounds like it must be a grunting, wordless 'good'.

"Why are you so concerned anyway? Did I accidentally step into the middle of Star Wars? Is Thanos' evil empire threatening you?"

"We must always be vigilant," is all that Thor says, irritatingly vague.

Oh, whatever. If Thor doesn't want to spill state secrets over lunch, Tony won't make him. In fact, Tony's starting to come to the realization that he doesn't give a shit. He grabs another bread roll and a thick slice of meat, making himself a little sandwich to eat while waiting for Thor to decide on a topic to bring up next.

He has a feeling he knows what it'll be. And he's not wrong.

"Why did you come here?" Thor asks him, quietly.

"I thought we went over this last night," Tony answers.

"Loki. You came for Loki. But I would know _why_."

"He's my friend."

"You knew my brother for mere days. He attacked your people and you made an attempt on his life. Yet now you would risk _your_ life to see him again. Why?"

"Oh for Christ's sake," Tony mutters. Thor can't be that dense. There's no way. "Are you seriously going to make me spell it out for you?"

"That he shared your bed?"

Sighing, Tony presses the heel of his hand against his forehead. "...Yeah. Okay so you're not as dumb as you look. But it's not just that. It's actually a lot more than that. Loki is..."

But how does he explain everything to Thor? He has a tough enough time trying to rationalize it to himself, that electric whirlwind of lust and desire and camaraderie and contentment he feels when he's with Loki, and the impossible, burning _need_ to be back with Loki again when they're apart. How does he even begin to make _Loki's brother_ understand that connection when it makes little enough sense in his own head? What Thor said is true. He was with Loki for days. Not even months or years: just days. It felt like so much more substantial a timeframe, but it's not something he can easily put into words. Or put into words with difficulty, for that matter. It's something he just _knows_.

So he'll start with what he _can_ explain. "I don't like leaving things unfinished. I'm pretty sure you're not the kind of guy who can just walk away from the middle of a fight..." Pausing, he glances up to look Thor in the eye, glad to see a little twinge of agreement there. "...or anything. Neither am I. But after the portal opened in New York, you took Loki away and left me with a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends. I had to spend the next three months cobbling together an explanation for why he did what he did, but without talking to Loki directly... I had no way of knowing if my guesses were right. Shit, I had no way of knowing what you'd even done to him!"

"Loki is in prison," Thor starts.

That's as far as he gets. "Yeah, I guessed that was probably the case," Tony says, cutting him off. "But still, do you know what it's like to be stuck so far away, not knowing, having everything outside your control, and being unable to do a single goddamn thing about it?"

Thor looks down. "Yes..." he answers in a soft voice.

"So maybe you get where I'm coming from. Three months, Thor. That's three months of no answers, no ending, no closure, always wondering... It's like I have this constant barrage of questions pounding through my head and no way for them to escape. Could I have done anything different? Could I have stopped him? Was that his whole plan, or is there another layer that I haven't peeled back yet? And another layer under that? Some things he said and... some things he did. It just doesn't all add up. And I _can't stop thinking about it_. All these thoughts keep swarming in my head, devouring everything else like a Biblical plague of locusts..."

"A plague of Lokis?" Thor asks with a bewildered half-frown and a wrinkled brow.

"...Not what I said, but now that you mention it, yeah. That's about right. A plague of Lokis. In my brain, all the time, every minute, every day, no relief. And the only way to get it out is to see him again."

"How do you know?"

_Magic._ Which sounds too stupid to say out loud, but that's the actual answer, isn't it? It's that strange, intuitive little part of his brain that tells him he needs to see Loki again. _Demanding _he see Loki again.

"I just do," he tells Thor, and that sounds only marginally less stupid. What is he, six years old? "I... have a feeling. I need to see Loki. If I don't, this'll never end. I'll go on obsessing and letting it rule my life." He drops his head back to look up at the ceiling, feeling the weight of his skull dragging down on his neck. It's so heavy. His eyes are heavy. Heavy and slow as lead, and tired – exhausted – but unable to rest. Not until he finds Loki and feels the flood of Loki's touch through his blood again.

He's so close. Loki's here. Somewhere. Somewhere in Asgard, somewhere in this city, maybe even somewhere in this damn palace. Hiding just out of sight behind the massive obstacle that is Thor.

"Look. I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. Seriously, I'm not. I'm trying to do what I need to do, and what I need to do is see Loki. That's it. I'm not here to cause any trouble and I'm sorry if your father has his shirt in a twist because I showed up out of the blue. I only want to see Loki. You let me see Loki and I'll leave without a fuss."

Maybe.

He lifts his head back up, meeting Thor face to face again. Though he doesn't like the way Thor's staring at him with those measuring, invasive eyes.

"You do not wish to free Loki from his prison?"

Well... it's not in his immediate plan. Yet. "I only want to see Loki." Wanting to see will probably evolve into wanting to do other things with Loki, but he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it. "Please. Let me talk to him."

And just like that, Thor nods. "Very well." Stuffing one last handful of cheese and bread into his mouth, Thor pushes his chair back, stands, and swallows the dregs of his 'wine'. "You may see Loki."

Tony's stomach lurches and twists. "I can..."

"In his cell, for one hour. I will call guards to escort you. You may speak to him today, and tomorrow we will discuss your return to Midgard."

"Sure," says Tony, probably quicker than he should. But this doesn't feel like a time for bargaining; it feels like a time for celebrating small victories. One step at a time. He has an hour with Loki. And then a discussion about returning to Midgard. There's no rule saying a discussion can't end in a second hour with Loki, and then maybe a third, and a postponed return.

"After you visit Loki, you will return here to dress for tonight. There is to be a banquet in your honor."

Tony almost says 'sure' again. Force of habit. The word's balanced on his tongue before he processes exactly what Thor said. "Wait, what did you just... What banquet?!"

The way Thor stares down at the ground, shifting from one foot to the other, reveals a lot about how much he might want to be kicking himself. "I told a friend of mine, Fandral, of your arrival," he mutters. "That was a lapse in judgement. Now everyone in Asgard knows of your presence. Father is... not pleased with me. The banquet was his idea. We are to present you as an honored guest, a dear friend of mine and a great warrior of Midgard."

"Are you serious?" Tony has to ask. First the angry confrontation on the bridge, then the secrecy of hiding him away in this room. Now things take a turn into the realm of ridiculous fantasy, oddly in line with what he thought about last night. "Banquet? Great warrior of Midgard?"

"You are, are you not?"

"Well yeah, obviously. Actually I'm more like _the _great warrior of Midgard. An argument could be made in favor of Rogers, though I think I carry things off with a little more panache. And better fashion sense. I just wasn't aware my fame had spread beyond the borders of Earth."

Once again, he gets the sense Thor really isn't listening to anything he says. "Tonight, then," Thor tells him. "Servants will come to help you dress. You will be escorted to the banquet by a good friend of mine, Lady Sif. She will tell you everything you need to know."

Thor leaves on that note, with no further explanation. Just walks on out the door, taking his ridiculous red vest and gray sarong with him. "Oh," Tony says to the empty room and the trail of energy scattered in the wake of Thor's departing back. "Okay. Sounds great. Really looking forward to it. Thanks for all the detailed instructions on what time, and what to wear, and how I should act and what I should do. This'll go over well."

He grabs a handful of grapes. Probably grapes. They're a lot bigger than what he's used to. Almost the size of small plums. "Yep, really well. I can foresee nothing going wrong with this venture."

Well, he'll worry about it later. Only one thing matters now.

ooo

It's the dungeon. Of course it'd be the dungeon. Highest room in the tallest tower is a little too innocent princess. The far-from-innocent prince will be in the dungeon. Down narrow corridors and steeply falling stairs, through metal doors that creak heavily as the guards release the lock and show him the way in. At the end of a row of white-walled cells containing their prisoners by energy field rather than anything as simple as bars.

Loki's in the last one. Tony can feel it with every step he takes, from the tightening knot in his stomach to the prickling dryness in his throat. Loki's there. Right there. At the end of this row, beyond that pillar.

The sight in that cell is still enough to knock the breath out of him, no matter how prepared he thinks he is.

There's a bed in the back corner. An ornate-looking bed with delicately curved golden legs, elegant and out of place in this prison by Ikea. The gentle line of Loki's shoulder rises out of a nest of blankets with a hint of pale, glowing skin. Black hair spreads in waves across his pillow: those same floppy guinea pig curls Tony remembers. They were on his pillow, once. When that milky skin lay pressed against his. Warm and smooth.

Three months ago. Though it might as well be three years for how wide that gap suddenly feels, all filled up with days plus distance multiplied by regrettable actions.

He takes a step forward, and the barrier of energy surrounding the cell dissolves. Another step brings him up into the cell. Loki, who's facing towards the wall and must really be asleep instead of just pretending, doesn't move at the sound of footsteps. Tony stops halfway to the bed.

At one point he had a whole list of things planned out that he wanted to say. Stupid things and sappy romantic things that he probably would never have ended up saying, but he planned them out anyway while lying sleepless through the early morning hours. In case he ever worked up the balls to be honest about anything. It always started off in his head with Loki asking him why he'd come, to which he'd answer, 'Because I miss you. Because I think of you every day. Constantly. Because I can't sleep and I lie awake all night, worrying until I'm physically ill, wondering what happened to you. Because I want to be with you. I need to be with you.'

The part he didn't think about was what he'd say first, before all that, to get Loki to ask the all-important question. How does this conversation start? Does he just walk in with a nod and a hello? Not that it matters anyway, because he can't say any of that shit. At least not yet. Not until he gets a few other things out of the way, like, 'Sorry I shot you,' and, 'Please assure me you didn't really mean to enslave my home planet.'

"...Loki?"

The shallow movement of Loki's back, the rise and fall of each gentle breath, stops in the shift from sleeping to waking. His shoulders tighten and curve inward like a protective shell. "I'm not hungry today. Leave."

"That's good," says Tony, "'cause I didn't bring you any food."

Loki doesn't jump up immediately at the sound of his voice. Add that to the long list of Asgardian expectations that turned out to be nothing more than wishful thinking, but damn if this one doesn't actually hurt, hitting him from the inside where he's unable to deflect the blow. No, Loki slowly rises in bed, keeping his blanket wrapped as a cape over his bare shoulders, and turns around to look at him only after a long, silent moment dragged down by hesitation and uncertainty. Eyes first. Mouth hidden behind the folds of his blanket-cape.

"Tony Stark."

"Yeah," Tony replies, taking another step forward. "It's me." There should be something better to say, but he can't think of it. The sight of Loki fills his brain as his heart hammers in his throat, and hell, he's lucky he can manage to croak out anything at all. "I, um..."

_I didn't come all this way to stand here like an asshole, _some helpful part of his conscience offers. _Standing here wringing my hands and wondering what to do while you stare at me with that look that's so..._

Three more steps to the bed and he sinks down on his knees onto the mattress. How his hands find their way around Loki's back isn't even worth thinking about; that's just what happens. First he's kneeling on the bed, then Loki's in his arms and they've lost their balance, falling back onto the pillows. "Tony Stark..." Loki repeats, this time making the name sound a little like an admonishment, but fuck if Tony cares. He's back where he needs to be, at Loki's side, and Loki's at his side, safe in his embrace. Loki. His Loki. His perfect, flawed, beautiful, terrifying Loki. Loki with magic in his sleep-warm skin. Loki whose breath is hot and real on Tony's neck, and who wears the crisp smell of soap in his hair. Not a thought or a fantasy or a dream. Just Loki. Real Loki. His Loki.

"I suppose you've come to rescue me," Loki murmurs close to Tony's ear, probably trying to keep some semblance of order and restraint over this frantic, clawing, gong-show of a reunion.

"Mm," Tony agrees. "Rescue mission." That's why he's here. Rescue mission. And...

"Rescue mission," Loki repeats back at him as his hand slides up to find the back of Tony's neck. "Well. It certainly took you long enough."


	4. Great Tale of the Battle for New York

They dress him for dinner in Asgardian finery of red and black, like a little doll to be put on parade. And then, yes, they put him on parade.

Prying eyes and whispering mouths line the corridors on the long way from Tony's room to the banquet hall, and that whole walk of shame isn't made any more bearable by the fifty or so pounds of leather, metal, and other inexplicable accessories draped over his shoulders. Or the lady Sif at his side. Her arm links through his in a way that manages to be both elegant and menacing, while her diaphanous pale pink gown floats and flutters and caresses the delicate sword hanging from her belt. It's a warning. A very clear warning. A warning that might as well be written out on an ostentatious scroll and hanging around Sif's neck.

_Dear Tony Stark,_

_We pretend to honor you in order to stage a spectacle for the masses, but don't let yourself get too comfortable, you unwelcome Midgardian peasant. Remember who's in charge. And if you even THINK about pulling any shit... _

_Love,  
Thor's dad_

There's a crudely drawn skull and crossbones at the bottom of the note. He can see it echoed in the shining curls of Sif's complicated hairstyle.

She leads him through at least four vast, golden, pillared halls before the rising noise level says they have to be close. "Just ahead," Sif tells him. It's one of a whopping six things she's said since she showed up at his door, the other five being, 'Good evening', 'I thought you'd be dressed already', 'This is taking too long', 'You look fine like that', and 'Follow me; we're late.' None of it particularly threatening, but not friendly either. She's not here to be his buddy. She's here, almost certainly at Thor's insistence, to keep him in line. And if she's pissed off about having to play babysitter, she's keeping it carefully hidden behind a stoically neutral face.

If she's pleased with the situation at all, well... She's keeping that pretty damn well hidden, too.

Tony sneaks a glance from the corner of his eye while she stares resolutely ahead. Really, she's a beautiful woman. Tall and athletic, with all that thick, dark hair and those wide, hazel eyes. Exactly the type he'd usually go for. If only this were three years ago, and the circumstances were different. As it is, under the established circumstance of 'find Loki and', he's happy enough with her cool silence.

Around one more corner and through yet another heavy, imposing door is a scene that, for better or worse, exactly matches what Tony was expecting. Table: long. Almost the entire length of the room, which has to be easily over a hundred feet, is filled with one enormous banquet table. Food: plentiful. How the table is still standing under the weight of all those platters of bread and fruit and what looks like at least a dozen whole roast pigs is an engineering marvel. Mood: rowdy. No, 'rowdy' isn't descriptive enough. Chaotic. Almost every seat is occupied by a large, Asgardian body hoisting a tankard of ale and hollering at someone else down at the other end of the table. It's really not surprising that food flies through the air as easily as words and at least three brawls have broken out. Maybe over a joke gone sour. Maybe over a woman. Probably for no reason at all, because everybody smells like they're enjoying the free-flowing rivers of drink a little too enthusiastically.

"Tony Stark!" Thor shouts from the far end of the room.

Tony forces a smile and does his best to wave despite the massive weight of his clothes bearing down on his shoulders. He follows Thor's beckoning arm.

"Sit here with me! I've saved you a place of honor near the head of the table."

This is a time for manners over personal feelings. "Thanks," Tony says as he and Sif approach.

Seated across from Thor is a woman who can only be his mother, all proud bearing and distinguished good looks. At the head of the table sits eyepatch Donald Sutherland. Thor's father. Has to be. Odin.

"Let me introduce my parents," Thor says to the surprise of nobody. "Odin Allfather, King of Asgard. And our queen, Frigga."

Frigga reacts to the introduction first, smiling pleasantly and holding out her hand, which Tony makes a point of awkwardly leaning over the table to kiss.

"It's a great honor to meet you, madam."

Her smile widens at that. Odin's slight frown stays etched in place. He doesn't offer his hand.

"Tony Stark of Midgard," he murmurs, almost too soft to be heard above the din of the hall. "I have heard many tales of your exploits."

"Only the ridiculous, I hope," Tony replies with a joyless grin. It earns no response.

When Odin stands, the entire hall stands with him. The speech he gives in Tony's 'honor' is the kind of thing Tony's used to tuning out. Welcome, distinguished guest, blah blah blah, so pleased to blah blah blah, mutual respect, something about a new era of cooperation and other total bullshit. Odin doesn't once look Tony's way throughout the whole thing. He speaks, raises his glass, and sits back down. Nothing less than is expected of him, and certainly nothing more.

So Tony doesn't bother to speak any words of his own. Gives a half-hearted salute as his name is mentioned, and slides back on down into obscurity in Thor's shadow. Keeps a low profile and eats his food in silence.

And there's a lot of food. A _lot_ of food. Somebody fills his plate, and before he's finished half of it, the plate's full again. Slabs of pork. Whole cooked carrots. Slices of dark, heavy bread. A vegetable identical to a potato, though with a sweet taste. Onions, beets, gravy, candied beans, roasted squash. Some kind of bizarre gelatin square that looks real fancy with its three color layers but has no flavor at all. Biscuits. Spinach. A savory-sweet sauce made of berries. More pork. Mushrooms stuffed with cheese. Mushrooms stuffed with bread. Mushrooms stuffed with meat. A giant tongue sliced paper-thin and served with pickles. Sausages and pastries and sausages wrapped in pastry. Even more pork.

"You're not hungry?" Sif asks when Tony passes on a fourth helping. She says it in a conversational tone, but also a tone that may be subtly insulting his manhood based on the pitiful amount of food he's managed to consume.

He lets the jibe slide by. "No. Thanks. I'm done." More than done. About-read-to-throw-up done. His stomach hurts from plate after plate after plate of food, and the tightly wrapped, laced, and buckled Asgardian getup sure isn't helping.

"Do you not enjoy our fare?" Frigga follows up with a note of concern.

"No no," Tony replies, quick to placate her. If he has a chance to make any ally in this realm, it might just be Thor's mom. _Loki's_ mom. "The food is wonderful. Your hospitality tonight has been... far beyond my expectations." No word of a lie there. "It's just that, um, humans have a limited stomach capacity. We can't really..." He glances down a few seats to where a waifish girl is heartily devouring a rack of ribs the length of her arm. "Yeah, we got nothing on that."

Thor's nodding head confirms what Tony says. "The humans of Midgard do eat very little. But they eat frequently. Several times each day."

"How interesting," says Frigga, while Odin grunts.

"Surely you've not come all this way, Tony Stark of Midgard, to merely ramble on about food?"

"Absolutely not," Tony answers smoothly. And thinks to himself, _I'm sure you know exactly why I'm here. But why ruin this fun little cat and mouse game you keep forcing me into, making me guess what the fuck you're up to at every turn?_ "I can also expound at length on science, technology, philosophy, politics, religion, and, the eternal question: Coke or Pepsi? What shall we discuss?"

"Tell the tale of the battle you fought on Midgard!" somebody shouts from down the table.

"Yes!" Thor answers, thrusting his fist into the air like some kind of belated victory whoop. It comes down in a solid thump on Tony's shoulder, almost hard enough to knock him out of his chair. "We will regale our fellow warriors with the great tale of the battle for New York City and how we defeated the vile Chitauri!"

Tony lifts a hand to his face to mask a groan as the whole table erupts in cries of approval. The Battle for New York City. How is that a great tale, or even a good tale by any stretch of the imagination? Loki snaked his way into opening a portal, a few dozen Chitauri came through, and Thor killed them all. Tony shot Loki. Natasha closed the portal. Crisis averted. That wasn't a battle. It was betrayal on top of betrayal with some dead aliens thrown into the mix. But Thor seems to think otherwise.

"My friends!" he says. "The great Battle for New York saw our brave allies in Midgard fighting against one of the most evil and deadly foes I have ever encountered. From a realm unknown in the deepest, foulest reaches of the universe came the Chitauri, seeking nothing but chaos and destruction!"

Pause for obligatory cheer. Thor cranks his winning smile up to eleven.

"Led by the villainous Loki!" a voice in the crowd offers.

"...Yes," Thor allows, but only after a curious pause. "Led by Loki. Though in truth he did not attack-"

"Because the coward always sends someone else to do his dirty work!"

Whoever said that earns himself a rousing chorus of laughter.

"But the _Chitauri_," Thor stresses, "were our chief foes that day. They swarmed out of the sky by the hundreds, so thick and fast they masked the sun like a vast, dark cloud! Attacking all in their path with weapons the likes of which I had never seen!"

_Eighty_, Tony silently corrects. _Maybe ninety, tops. Ninety reptilian jerks on hoverboards, carrying oversized taser sticks._ But everybody listening seems to like Thor's version of things. And hey, what's a little embellishment between friends? So Thor goes on to describe in detail how many Chitauri he killed, in numerous inventive ways, and how much damage was done to the city. And apparently Steve makes it into the story despite having been on a fighter jet at the time, and he ripped an invader's leg off with his bare hands and used the severed limb to knock the heads clean from the shoulders of eight more. Very Captain America.

"But what of Loki?" someone persists. "Was it not Tony Stark who defeated Loki in the end?"

Another asshole feels compelled to chime in here, this time addressing Tony directly. "Is it true you nearly killed the traitor Loki with a weapon the humans devised using energy from the Tesseract?"

And there's a cheer. A spectacular cheer for Loki's brush with death. The noise dies down quick enough though as faces turn to stare at Tony, searching for an answer to their morbid question.

"Um," is all he can say.

The Asgardian clothes are stifling. Heavy and growing heavier, pushing down on his shoulders and back and compressing molten, twisting heat into his gut. Yeah. He defeated Loki. He nearly killed Loki. He was the one who shot Loki, and who had Loki's blood on his hands (and his arms and his chest and his neck and his face), feeling its warmth and weight. He was the one who tried to stop the bleeding with a wadded-up shirt as a futile bandage, and cradled Loki's shattered body in his arms, and tried to help him breathe despite the liquid gurgling in his throat.

"I..."

_I feel sick_, says the voice in his mind, and there's bile rising up from his stomach, and he has to clench his teeth and hold his breath, bracing his fists against the edge of the table.

Someone (Frigga... it's Frigga) pushes a goblet of water towards him, which Thor grabs and forces into his hand. He takes a long drink, if only as a convenient excuse to ignore the voices calling for him to tell them about Loki. The water, warm and metallic from sitting too long, only adds to the nausea churning inside.

At the head of the table, the king of all Asgard leans forward with a creak of hard leather to speak his bidding. "Yes, what a tale that must be, Tony Stark. The defeat of Loki, rogue son of Asgard. How did you manage such a feat? It would please me to hear."

It's weird, really, how the sound of Odin's impassive voice grates so violently on Tony's nerves, peeling away all the feelings that might have surfaced with the image of Loki in his mind. Soft-spoken claws puncture his skin and dig underneath. What they reveal is nothing more than a core full of rage.

"Father..." he hears Thor whisper, but it's too late. He takes one last sip of water, sets his glass down, and sits straighter in his chair. Clears his throat.

"You want to know how I defeated Loki? Okay. Here we go." His eyes scan over the length of the table, everything he can see from his vantage point. Starting with Odin. Ending with Sif's fine-boned profile. She's staring at some mystery point on the opposite wall, careful not to look at him. "I'm sure all of you were shocked to hear that I was the one who took Loki down. Not Thor. Not the guy you sent after him. Me. Just some jerk you'd never heard of until Thor told you this rousing epic."

"But you are a renowned warrior of Midgard-" starts Dread Pirate Blondie on Sif's other side.

"-whom nobody at this table had heard of until this morning," Tony finishes. "You're just taking Thor's word on it. But that's okay. I'm here to clear a few things up. Truth is? I'm not a great warrior. I've never fought in a real war. There are people out there who have – people I know, friends of mine – and I won't insult them by pretending to be something I'm not. Up until a few years ago I used to... let's say, _participate_ in war, but not in the way you might think. I never fired a gun or held a sword or whatever you think the honorable battle should be. Never led troops, never followed anyone else. No, I sat safely behind the scenes, because I wasn't a warrior. I made weapons. I never used them, but I made them."

"Were you a..." one woman asks, but her brow knots when she can't find the right word.

"Engineer," says Tony. "I was – am – an engineer. I designed and built weapons for the guys doing the fighting. Good weapons. No, you know what? Scratch that. Not gonna lie. The _best_ weapons. Bigger, faster, smarter, deadlier, you name it, I built it."

"And your armor," Thor cuts in.

"Yeah. The armor. That came after..." No, he doesn't need to get into all that. Not with these people. "After I gave up making weapons, I moved on to something more specialized. I made the armor I'm sure Thor's told you all about. But that's not what you asked," he says, looking back at Odin. "You asked how I managed to defeat Loki. And someone here already answered that question: with a gun powered by the Tesseract's energy. I fired one shot, which hit Loki, but that was only after fifteen minutes of trying to talk him down. I didn't want to shoot him. Not for any reason. If there were any other way out I would've taken it without a second thought, but when you're down to the wire and..."

He has to stop. Take a breath. Close his eyes. "It was a last-second, desperate action when nothing else would work, and I still regret doing it. Every minute of every day. I know Loki survived. It wasn't a fatal shot and I didn't intend it to be. I was aiming for his arm. But that doesn't make me regret it any less."

Maybe it even makes him regret it more. Because he has to live with what he did, and he has to live with Loki living through what he did...

"His armor allows him to fly!" Thor offers, desperate to get this train wreck of a confessional back on track, but it doesn't work. An awkward blanket of silence has fallen over the table, smothering all attempts at conversation down into a low rumble.

"I would have killed him," someone says. The first voice to speak loud enough to be heard. Tony doesn't bother to look and see who it is. "Better a clean death in battle than rotting in prison like a common thief!"

"Who says he's any better than a common thief?" a second voice shouts, and then the laughter comes pouring back in, fluid as the booze greasing its way.

That's all the consideration Tony's words are worth. Nobody wants that kind of melancholy contemplation and dour regret at what's supposed to be a banquet of celebration. Halfway down the table, a new conversation is already rising from the dull gray ashes of the old, this one recalling a famous battle from years earlier against someone in some place Tony's never heard of. A battle more interesting and more conducive to victory toasts.

As he lowers his head to rub his eyes, Tony feels Thor's heavy hand on his shoulder. It's almost reassuring.

ooo

"And then I didn't even tell you the _worst_ part!" Tony says as he paces the width of the cell, from translucent forcefield wall to the spindly legs of Loki's bed. "After the whole gong show of the actual banquet, Sif and two of her servants... handmaidens? Whatever you call them. They escorted me back to my room, and one of the girls stayed behind to help me undress. Which I thought must be normal, because how was I ever supposed to get out of all those layers on my own? Right? And then she offered to give me a back massage, and again, I thought that must be normal because, let's face it, after wearing that getup all night my shoulders hurt like a bitch. It wasn't until I was in bed in my underwear and she sat on top of me and pulled her dress off that..."

Lying in his own bed, Loki's laughing at Tony's story in a way that might legitimately be described as a cackle of evil glee. "Yeah, yeah, hilarious," Tony mutters. "She was really strong and it took a lot of creative evasion and fast talk to get her to leave."

"Oh, that's classic Thor." Loki says with his demonic grin.

"...Thor?"

"Mm. Thor. Exactly the sort of thing he'd try. What better way to help you forget about me than by throwing a pretty young woman into your bed?"

Tony shakes his head. "I don't think Thor would do that."

"Oh, I _know _Thor would do that," Loki insists. "It's his way. Do you know how many women choose to become warriors?"

Tony stops pacing long enough to fold his arms over his chest. "Uh... some irrelevant number that has nothing to do with what we were just talking about?"

"Few," Loki continues. Just like he doesn't give a crap about anything Tony says. Surprise, surprise. "Very few. Our dear Sif, whom you met tonight, is the only one I know. So what do you suppose happens when all those men run off to fight some war or another, and they're gone for days or weeks or months? And perhaps there's one lone woman amongst them, though there's no guarantee she'll care for that manner of celebration after a long day of blood and sweat and rage?"

"...Okay," says Tony. He starts back up with the pacing. "I get where you're going with this. They become a bit more flexible with their sexuality when it suits their needs."

"Why do you think they so willingly allow little witch-boys like me to tag along on their great adventures when they can hardly bear to look at us the rest of the time?"

Tony stops again. "...You..." There's an odd little worm of something in his stomach he can't quite place as he turns to face Loki.

"I said _like_ me," Loki replies, rolling his eyes in that all-too-familiar way he has. "Not me specifically. So you can rein in your adorable yet unnecessary jealousy, Tony Stark."

Jealousy. Yeah. That's it. That's the feeling down in his gut. Not an emotion he's overly familiar with, but he knows it when it's named. "I'm not... jealous..." he mutters, shoe-scuffing his way over to the bed to sit by Loki's feet, climbing up so he can lean against the wall.

Loki's smile could mean a lot of different things. "But to finish my story, sometimes a warrior, after being away from home too long, forms... an unacceptable bond. The common remedy is to guide him into a more agreeable relationship. Thor often takes it as his personal responsibility. He's very morally upstanding. So it's only natural for him to assume that he can easily lure you away from me. Of course you'd rather be with any woman than with the man you only fell into bed with by chance when you had no other choice, on the run from the law."

"Maybe I would be," says Tony, sending a smirk of his own back to combat Loki's snide smile.

"Yes, one might assume so by virtue of the fact that you're down here in the dungeon with me rather than up in your bedroom with Thor's beautiful and willing remedy to your aberrant behavior."

"Thor doesn't know the first thing about me if he thinks he can cure all my aberrations in one night."

"Anyhow," Loki goes on, "I'm sorry to deflate your ego. I'm sure she would have been perfectly eager to sleep with you regardless."

"Of course she would. I'm very desirable."

Tony crawls his way up the bed to sit – well, lean – next to Loki, propping himself up on one elbow while wrapping the other around Loki's waist. His head fits nicely on Loki's shoulder, close to the pale skin of Loki's neck with the smell of fresh soap and the taste of-

Loki pulls back. "Not now."

Since when is 'not now' a thing that happens with Loki? "Why not?"

"The guards may be watching."

"And?"

"Were you not listening to anything I said a moment ago about aberrant behavior and how Thor might try to cure it?"

"Yes." But then it seemed that they were in agreement about some things being incurable. Hence the current snuggling.

Loki extracts himself from Tony's embrace with a sigh that can't be anything but reluctant, kneeling up on the bed. "Try to think about it, Tony Stark. I won't explain things in detail, but perhaps you can imagine what might happen if you continue to flaunt said aberrant behavior."

"What, your Dark Ages muscle-headed warriors will have me drawn and quartered?"

It was supposed to be a joke. Loki, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be laughing. Or even smiling. "Just try to be careful," is his only answer.

"So what happens?" Tony asks as he shifts into a sitting position, staring Loki down and hoping for some kind of sign that this is just a temporary glitch in their reunion. He'll ignore the part where prognosis doesn't look good. "I come all the way from Earth, past a whole lot of barriers that every bit of known logic says are impossible to overcome, and I'm not even allowed to kiss you?"

"Why do you think I stopped you earlier this afternoon?" Loki asks.

He rakes his hair back. "I don't know... I thought you were just being distant because you were still mad at me for shooting you, and then I showed up without warning, and things were weird because neither of us really knew where we stood. But just a minute ago it felt a lot better, didn't it?"

It did. Loki's little gaze away, how he averts his eyes in that way he has of avoiding anything he doesn't want to admit, says so. It felt comfortable. Natural. As if they belonged together once again, as if that three month wedge of time were nothing, and everything that had happened on the roof of Stark Tower were just a bad dream. They might be back in Phoenix. In bed. Watching a stupid show on TV and forgetting about the outside world.

"If you prefer," Loki says slowly as he stares at the forcefield-wall, "you could pretend I'm still angry at you for shooting me."

That's also obviously supposed to be a joke. But it's the kind of joke that's so funny Tony forgets to laugh.

"So what do we do?" he asks. "I..." _I what_? Is there anything else to say? No, 'what do we do' more or less covers it all. He's come all this way to find out he followed Loki into a land where they can never be together?

Loki looks back at him, meeting his eye. "I will think of something."

"Magic?"

"Possibly. It may take some time. Everything is... complicated here. You saw how many stairs you had to go down to reach this wretched place. This far underground we're too close to the heart of the world, where vital energy is thick and strong. In addition, the palace is guarded by so many different magical workings that it all comes together as... It feels like a heavy net, holding my power in. Not preventing it, but muffling and distorting."

"So you can't teleport." Obviously. What a genius observation. Otherwise Loki wouldn't still be stuck in this cell.

"No. The energy down here interferes with magic in general, and the shield around the cell prevents any attempt at shifting."

"So you can't-"

"How did you even get in here?" Loki asks in a clean, if somewhat abrupt, change of subject. "I never thought Thor would allow you a second visit."

"You must've missed the memo down here in the cheap seats," says Tony. "I'm a renowned and highly respected warrior of Midgard. So when I say I need to visit the prisoner who tried to destroy my realm, people listen."

Loki stares at him with one incredulously raised eyebrow. "And the guards allowed this?"

"Hey, if you act with authority, a lot of time nobody questions you. Okay, and most people upstairs are drunk from the banquet. And also I snuck through a lot of doors when nobody was looking. And I'm pretty sure I had a healthy dose of dumb luck on my side."

"You're going to find yourself arrested one of these days," Loki murmurs.

_Probably sooner than later_, says some nagging part of Tony's brain, which is probably right. At least if he can judge by the way Odin was treating him at the banquet. "Eh, I'll get by." He will. He always does. Somehow. This time, the only difference is he has to find a way to pull Loki along for the ride.

"Thor won't be happy when he finds out what you've done."

"Screw Thor. Who cares about how I got in? The important question is: how are we going to get you out?

There's a long pause, drawn out over inhalations and exhalations, as if Loki's thinking up a watertight plan, perfect from all angles, right there in his head. He bites his lip, closes his eyes, and tilts his head back so when he opens them again he's contemplating the ceiling. But whatever he's plotting, all he says is, "I told you. I'll think of something."

Okay then. Loki will think of something. Only this time, Tony hopes he'll decide to share his great plan before taking it live. But maybe that should be a worry for another day.


	5. An Abundance of Direction and Purpose

He can still dream of Loki: neither magical prison walls nor Asgardian social barriers can prevent that. He can dream of Loki stretched out in bed, luminously pale against deep wine-red sheets. He can dream of long, lithe arms and legs naked to the air, and one hand reaching out invite him closer. He can dream of Loki's half-lidded eyes and gently parted lips, waiting with a breath of desire. He can dream the sight of his fingertips tracing the shape of Loki's body. He can dream his mouth onto the soft skin of Loki's throat, and dream Loki's sighing reaction.

"You've been away for so long," whispers Loki.

_I know_, Tony answers. _And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry._

There's a taste of sweetness on Loki's lips. Salt on his tongue. He returns Tony's kiss with a dangerous hint of a bite and a scratch of teeth.

"I waited for you all that time. You knew I was here. Why did you not come sooner?"

_Oh Loki I tried..._ Tony wants to say, but can't, he just can't, so instead he slides his arms around Loki's back and pulls him close. Chest to chest and skin on warm skin. Pressed so tight together, Loki's heart beats its speeding rhythm into Tony's veins. His hands slide down to Loki's waist, then hips. And lower. Skimming along Loki's thighs, which part for him so easily. And...

He's missed this. This feeling. This perfection. This moment, simply having Loki's body beneath his. The way they move so instinctively together in an effortless, animal rhythm. The way Loki's eyes squeeze shut when his mouth opens in a sharp gasp. His head drops to the side, and Tony's lips find his cheek. His ear. His neck, caressed by wisps of loose black hair.

"Tony Stark..." Loki whispers. A name breathed out as pleasure floods in, and Tony bites down hard on Loki's shoulder

He's missed this so much more than he can even describe.

One hand slides up to Loki's face, guiding him back into a frenzy of a kiss. Only this time Loki's eyes are open. And suddenly wide with heartbroken concern.

"I have no credibility," Loki says.

ooo

Tony snaps awake. Pretty much literally snaps: his back spasms as if he's been shocked, and his head jerks up, eyes suddenly wide open. Mind wide awake.

It's light in his room. Not just morning-light, but _really_ light. Light like it has to be almost noon. He picks up his watch out of habit, which is able to tell him it's currently 4:09 am in California. Useful. But by his estimate, Sif took him down to the banquet at sundown, approximately seven o'clock, and he was there for about three hours. Then spent two hours or so in the dungeon before Loki insisted he leave on fear of arousing suspicion. Add in another hour's leeway for travel time and eviction of an amorous Viking woman, and he probably went to bed around one. So if it's almost noon, maybe eleven now...

"Holy shit," he says out loud.

Ten hours. He slept for at least ten solid hours, and for the first time in months, he can say he feels well rested. Refreshed and revitalized. No lingering grogginess, no heavy clouds weighing down on his brain. Even the energy in the air seems like less of a burden, dwindling down to a minor background hum. For the first time in months, he feels actually... really good. Like _himself_ again. Exactly like his familiar old self. Right down to the sappily embarrassing sex dreams and all the morning inconvenience that comes along with them.

With a yawn and a stretch he climbs out of bed, stepping out of his shorts and kicking them aside before heading into the bathroom to wash up. The first fountain along the back wall, the short one, is the toilet, and it's a trick to remember how to flush it according to the instructions the dressing crew gave him the previous night. There's a place down the side of the pedestal he needs to tap twice with his foot. Unmarked. The Asgardian esthetic doesn't allow for any ugly knobs, buttons, or levers screwing up the lines of their minimalist interior design. The tall fountain in the middle is the sink, and Tony still can't get the hang of stroking the left side of its ovular bowl in just the right way to trigger a change in water temperature. Supposedly clockwise is cold and counterclockwise is hot, but he'll make do with lukewarm for now. Stroking the right side of the bowl drains the whole contraption and fills it with fresh water. For whatever reason, that action works just fine.

The third fountain, only slightly taller than the toilet and of a hazardously similar shape, is decorative and nothing more. Because having only two fountains in the room clearly isn't enough.

But the bathtub, Tony has to admit, makes sense, and maybe if he'd taken a minute to poke around he'd have been able to figure it out on his own. The control panel is located on the outside of the tub below the wide, crescent-shaped spout, and although it seamlessly blends into the silvery-blue surface, it lights up with a single touch. Pressing the blue spiral symbol starts the water flowing. Tracing up a vertical line to the right sets the depth. By default the water comes out pleasantly warm, but stroking the edge of the tub in the same manner as the fountain-sink adjusts the temperature. When he's done bathing, the water drains automatically without being asked. Now this is something he could get used to. Sleek and elegant, no messing around with taps or those stupid drain levers that always jam. He should try to rig up something like this in his own place if he ever gets back to Malibu.

_When_, he immediately corrects himself, jarred by that misplaced thought. _When_ he gets back to Malibu. And adds, like a resolution, _With Loki._

He hasn't even finished dressing (jeans under his new black and red Asgardian tunic, because why not) when somebody knocks at the door. A second later, without bothering to wait for a response, Thor comes barging through. Exactly what Tony was expecting.

Thor being accompanied by another visitor, however, is not exactly what Tony was expecting. Frigga. The queen of Asgard herself, gliding into his bedroom with a whisper of silk and a warm smile.

"Good morning, Tony Stark," she says to him.

"Good morning," he returns, scrambling to guess at the appropriate greeting. In hindsight, this is another one of those things somebody really should have gone over with him. Bathrooms and acceptable forms of royal address. "...Ma'am?"

She smiles and nods. Must've been a good guess.

But standing next to her, Thor's all tight-lipped frowns and grouchy countenance. He's pissed off about something, but who knows what that might be, since he was nothing but friendly and even sympathetic when Tony left the banquet. Something's managed to change in the past twelve hours. And knowing Thor, it won't stay a secret for long.

"Tony Stark," he says, unfolding his arms from across his chest so he can stand in a squared, confrontational pose.

"Morning to you too, Ravishing Ronald," says Tony. "You don't look so thrilled to be here today. What's wrong? Too much mead?"

Maybe one of these days Tony will remember that Asgardians never actually listen to him. "Last night you returned to see Loki," Thor continues. "Why? I did not give you permission for a second visit."

Aw, shit. So it was a little optimistic to hope his late-night trip down to the dungeon would go unnoticed. He glances quickly over at Frigga, searching for any sign as to her stance on this issue, but her eyes are fixed on Thor and give nothing away. Her smile has shrunk down to a little shadow of its former brightness.

"Sorry," Tony answers carefully. "Considering the casual nature of my first visit, I didn't think another would be problematic. I apologize for my error, and will make sure I speak with you before visiting Loki in the future."

Thor grunts. He might believe that. Even if he only halfway believes, it's better than nothing. At least he doesn't make any snappish retorts about anyone being explicitly forbidden from visiting Loki in the future. One good sign. But he's still not ready to let things go completely. "I allowed you access to Loki's cell on account of your condition. But if you seek to visit him without my knowledge-"

"Thor..." Frigga gently interrupts.

Tony's too hung up on what Thor said to let his attention be turned, though. "Wait, what do you mean by my 'condition'?"

"Is it not obvious?" Thor growls. "You have become addicted to Loki's magic."

"_Addicted_?" Tony echoes back, as if somehow, maybe, saying that word for himself will help it make any sense. (It doesn't.) What the hell does Thor mean, 'addicted'?

"Thor," Frigga repeats, more forcefully this time.

Thor ignores her. "I've seen this many times. The effects of magic are known to be addictive, especially to those who cannot wield it. Humans are highly susceptible. You allowed yourself to be too close with Loki, and now his magic has infiltrated your being. _This_ is why you felt so compelled to come after him, Tony Stark. You said it yourself yesterday: these thoughts remain lodged in your mind and you cannot be rid of them, and you are driven by a compulsion to see Loki that you do not understand and cannot explain. All of this clearly points to-"

"_Thor_."

Frigga's admonishment isn't a shout, exactly. In truth she barely raises her voice, but the tone and the authority in that one syllable are enough to knock Thor silent. Thus chastised, he shuts his big mouth and stares down at the floor.

The downside to Thor being talk-blocked by his mother, though, is that now none of the dozens of questions suddenly pounding through Tony's head are being answered. Addicted to magic? Is that even possible, or is it just some insane excuse Asgardians use to steer clear of their magic-wielding brethren? Yes, it's true he felt that driving _need_ to find Loki, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. (Does it?) The insomnia doesn't mean anything. A lot of different stuff could have caused that. Any number of personal problems, stress, depression... None of it means a damn thing.

The horrible, churning feeling in his gut likewise means nothing at all.

"Perhaps it might be better if I handled this," Frigga tells Thor, who responds with a displeased grunt.

"You do not know Tony Stark like I do, mother."

"No," she agrees. "But perhaps I can remedy that." Without waiting for another word out of her sullen son she turns to Tony, yet another welcoming smile lighting her face. "Tony Stark, would you care to accompany me on a walk through the palace grounds? There are many things I would discuss with you."

"Yes ma'am," Tony agrees before Thor can object with so much as a huff of breath. If he's about to be told he's absolutely, positively, 100% addicted to magic, he wants those words to come from Frigga, not Thor. For whatever reason, he has a hunch her calm voice might soften the blow. And he has another hunch that what she wants to tell him isn't necessarily in line with Thor's blunt assertions. He grabs his new black cape off the back of a chair, since judging by both Thor's and Frigga's attire, capes are in this year. A few quick strides and he's at Frigga's back, following her out the door.

"Perhaps I should-" says Thor, but Frigga waves him off.

"No, Thor, I believe it would be better if I spoke with Tony Stark alone this time. You should go see your father. I know he has a task he wishes you to do this afternoon."

And so mom lays down the law. Tony tries not to smirk too much as Thor, muttering something like 'yes mother', bows his head and skulks away. Probably to complain to dad. He'll be back, Tony has no doubt about that, but maybe by that time he'll have had another mood switcheroo and he'll be a happy little elf once again.

"Now you come with me," Frigga says to Tony. He catches up to walk at her side, and offers his arm, which she takes. "Let me show you the garden."

ooo

By 'garden' Frigga naturally means 'giant multi-level labyrinthine oasis full of astounding plants, animals, walkways, pavilions, and gravity-defying water features'. Blue-barked trees with leaves the size of cars. Hanging vines that glitter where the sunlight hits them. Tiny, bright red lizards chased by bizarre rodents that look like curly-coated possums, and birds with feathers as subtle as lace. Tony follows Frigga across a slender bridge that spans a flower-filled river, and through a grove of willowy trees cloaked in a sharp herbal scent, like fresh sage. Past a tunnel of braided branches, they come to a stone balcony at the edge of a cliff. Far to the left, he can see a stairway cut into the cliff face, a path leading down to the continuation of the garden below. Behind them, the palace looms like a golden mountain. Ahead and below, sunlight reflects off mirror-still ponds and irregular marble domes.

"This is one of my favorite places to come," says Frigga. "I do not believe any place in Asgard has a better view."

She places her hands on the balcony's scrolling stonework, and Tony does the same, feeling the sun-warm stone under his hands, and the tickle of moss growing through its knotwork patterns of carved lines. "It's beautiful," he replies.

"Do you find Asgard very strange, compared to your home?"

Compared to his home? Yes. But compared to the rest of Earth, which is what he assumes she means? "A little?" he answers. "It's hard to say. I mean, yes, Asgard's pretty different from the specific place where I live. But I've been all around the world, from the biggest cities to largely untouched corners of the globe and everything in between, so it's not like this feels any stranger than going to India or Sicily or Brazil. It's foreign, but in a familiar way, if that makes any sense." He pauses. "I thought it would be a lot stranger. Thor and Loki told me hardly anything about this place, and most of what I did hear was just offhand references. I thought it would be more... I don't even know how to explain it. More fantasy, less sci-fi?"

It's pretty clear from the polite smile that Frigga has no clue what he means.

"Magic," he says. "Loki talked a lot about 'magic', which I always interpreted as, well, _magic_. Wave your hand, conjure a frog kind of deal. Though now that I think back, that's exactly what Loki told me it wasn't. He tried to explain how magic was nothing more than a highly evolved form of science, but I don't think I really _got_ that until I arrived here to see for myself. Especially today. In the bathroom of all places. Very Archimedean. But it's something as simple as controls for a bathtub, that I can see and touch and use for myself, and suddenly it's so clear, right in front of my face, that this is just the next leap forward in scientific discovery."

"Controls for a bathtub are hardly the pinnacle of achievement," Frigga replies, wearing the kind of pinched expression that says she's a little embarrassed by his enthusiasm for magical plumbing.

"I know, to you, but to me what this says is that you've managed to create the equivalent to a computerized system without a computer. It's all manipulation of energy, isn't it? I bet someone like Loki who's adept at so-called 'magic' would be able to operate a system like that without even touching it. The control pad is all for the benefit of people like me who don't have that ability."

Frigga nods. "That's true. Did Loki tell you much about his powers?"

"A general overview."

"Mm."

The word (if a sound like 'mm' can even be called a word) hangs in the air as an invitation while Frigga looks out over the sprawling garden, but Tony doesn't take it. She has something to say. She brought him out here, to this place, because she has something to say. And he'd rather hear her say it than go on about himself and computerized bathtubs and what he knows about magic.

But she puts off the hard part of the conversation for a little longer. "Loki told me many things about you. Your name came up far more often than any other when he spoke of the time he spent on Midgard."

"Oh yeah?" Tony asks. He's not surprised, or at least he shouldn't be surprised. After all, Loki spent more time with him than with anyone else, so it's natural that his name should come up. Probably more than once. At least half of any stories Loki could tell about his Earthly adventures would include the phrase 'Tony Stark and I'. And yet Tony still feels his stomach leap in a stupid little teenage thrill because the guy he likes mentioned him to mom.

"You must have been a very good friend to him."

"Um," says Tony, trying like hell not to blush or grin or do anything else to make himself look like a total idiot. "I guess that's mostly true. To be fair though, when we first met I did think he was a complete dick. Pardon my language."

He can see a smirk tugging at the corners of Frigga's mouth. "He may have spoken of you in... similar terms."

"He wouldn't be the first. But I usually deserve it. I'm sure you heard before last night that-" Shit, he regrets saying these words even before they're out of his mouth, bringing the conversation down like so much dead weight: "-I was the one who shot him."

"Yes," Frigga murmurs. "Loki said nothing of it. But Thor told me."

Yeah, the conversation doesn't just drag down. It full out stops, dwindling into an uncomfortable silence where Frigga stares down at her fingers, clenched white over a little stone carving in the shape of a shell, and Tony racks his brain in search of anything at all he can say to turn things around. "Loki... uh..."

Frigga glances up. Eyes hopeful. The look of somebody in search of even one snippet of good news.

"Everything I said at the banquet was true. About me trying to talk Loki down and regretting..." _Everything_. "I didn't want it to end that way."

"I know," Frigga says softly.

Tony knows his next question is in danger of knocking their nice little chat reeling once more, but now that it's in his head he has to ask all the same. "What about the things everyone else said last night? How Loki's a coward and he'd be better off dead? Was that all true?"

Frigga doesn't even need to speak. The way her shoulders tense and her face freezes into a hardened mask, so much like Loki, is answer enough.

"Is it common in Asgard to speak so disrespectfully about somebody who was their prince?"

"It is because he was their prince that they speak so disrespectfully," Frigga answers slowly, and Tony can't help but note the change in the tone of her voice. Away from its previous warmth and into a cool, neutral formality.

"And the king condones this?"

Her pause lasts just a little too long for her to believe what she says next with absolute conviction. "For the good of the realm, it is my husband's wish that Loki be treated so. Loki is a prince, as you say, Tony Stark. But you forget that he disappeared from Asgard without a trace, and until Thor brought him back from your realm, we here had no idea where he had gone or what had happened to him. For a long time, we thought him dead and grieved for our loss. To see one who had been their prince – one who had even briefly been their _king_ – returned not with a grand welcome but with a chain around his neck would cause too much confusion among the people. Odin had no choice but to tell them what Loki had done. The only way to ensure peace after Loki's return, and to ensure none attempted any rebellious plots to free him, was to recast Loki as a traitor and a coward in the eyes of the populace."

"I guess royally sanctioned rumors catch on fast," says Tony. The taste of those words sits bitter on his tongue.

Sharp as a knife, she answers right back. "Do you think we enjoy doing this to _our own son_? Do you think we are happy to see him condemned to prison? Mocked and reviled?"

"I don't think _you're_ happy with it."

"My husband is a wise man who does what he knows is right for our family and our people," Frigga says, hard and final. "He is our king. I trust his judgment."

A king who rules with an iron fist so heavy it crushes dissent before it even occurs. Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? Odin doesn't have two fucks to rub together about what Loki did to Jotunheim, or what he tried to do on Earth. Tony's pretty sure. What Odin cares about is that Loki's ass briefly touched the royal throne, and that he tried to keep it from Thor. Now Loki's back with a newfound taste for power. And if Odin's so worked up about it, that means Loki has to hold a little more than a snowball's chance in hell of some of the Asgardian people supporting his potential bid for the top job. Not acceptable. The throne is reserved for the son Odin can rely on to carry on his legacy. So meet the new boss, same as the old boss: Thor's taking over the king's tedious tasks of dealing with unwanted Midgardian visitors, while Loki rots in jail because he has the bad luck of being the adopted second son with too much sudden ambition.

But all that boils down into the murky sludge of treasonous thought, so what Tony says is, "I apologize. That was out of line. It's not my place to criticize the king, and I'm sorry."

"Thank you," Frigga says with a simple nod. "Though it is not your fault. You've been affected by Loki's magic."

Ah-ha. So they're back around to this topic. Good. "So you think I am addicted to magic, or whatever Thor said? Because honestly..." He shakes his head. Sounds like a load of bull.

Frigga starts with the facts. "Part of what Thor said is true. Magic can have addictive properties, and humans, with little magical ability of their own, are susceptible to addiction. But Thor was mistaken in that the symptoms you display, of compulsion and infatuation and insomnia, do not coincide with the usual effects of magic addiction. Addiction causes depression. Lethargic hopelessness. Feeling as if one has lost one's purpose and direction. I see none of that in you."

"Nope," Tony agrees. If he has anything in life, it's an abundance of direction and purpose. Maybe not in the best of ways, but he has both of those in spades.

"But it may be something else. Do you mind?" She raises her hands so that they hover close to either side of Tony's face, waiting for approval.

He nods. "Go ahead. Should I close my eyes?"

"It's not necessary. But you may do so if you feel more comfortable."

He feels more comfortable. Intense, close-range eye contact has never really been his thing. So he closes his eyes, takes one bracing breath in, and feels the warmth radiating from Frigga's hands as the tips of her fingers land at his hairline.

The spark of magic that leaps from her skin to his is all too familiar. A low level, just a caress in place of a punch to the gut, but by no means less powerful or less potent than anything he ever felt from...

Tony jerks back with a gasp, eyes flying open in time to see his own shock and surprise mirrored on Frigga's face. "I see," she whispers.

See? See what? "What do you mean?" he manages to choke out.

"Loki would not admit it to me, but I guessed that you two had been lovers."

_Lovers_. Now there's a word that Tony's always hated, and although he can't precisely say why, he suspects it might have something to do with the _love_ part. That word also never fails to set him on edge. Makes him grind his teeth. "Uh..."

"You need not worry. I am familiar with the ways of seiðrmen and Loki's preferences."

"Scythe-what?" Tony has to ask.

"I will not judge you."

It's almost as if she's Thor's mom or something, the way she artfully doesn't listen to his question. And he knows she means well with that no-judging comment, though the implication behind it doesn't sit so well. "...Right. Anyway, you said you don't think I'm addicted to magic, but it might be something else. What? Did Loki cast some kind of weird spell on me?"

It's such a dumb question he's expecting her to laugh and say 'no'. That she doesn't immediately laugh is a bad, bad sign.

"There are three primary ways of working magic. The first is simple energy manipulation, which you have already mentioned. Most of what Loki has likely shown you, illusions, projections, space-shifting and shape-shifting fall, into this category."

"Okay," says Tony, though the unspoken reaction in his head is more along the lines of, _That stuff is considered_ _simple_?

"Energy manipulation cannot create continuous, self-replicating effects. The spell is worked, and then it is done. It would not linger and propagate within you for this long. In order to create a lasting magical hold on you, he would have had to turn to something more powerful. Either sex magic or blood magic."

And now Tony can see clear as day where Frigga's going with this. "I'm going to stop you right there," he says, holding up his hands. "Much as I have never been the kind of person to shy away from the ol' kiss and tell, you're Loki's mom, so that makes this discussion very weird. Can we just move on to the part where you tell me what's going on while demurely skipping past the part where we determine how it happened?"

"It would not have been sex magic, Tony Stark," she says with a coy little smirk.

Maybe she's a little unclear about exactly what he and Loki spent most of their time doing. "...Are you sure?"

"Beyond a doubt. Sex magic can only be performed under very specific circumstances, and more than that, would not have been effective for this purpose. As for blood magic... It would be the likely culprit here. But it is not something he would have been able to do without you noticing."

The bad feeling Tony had earlier when Thor first brought up this subject is back. And not just back, but back and stronger than ever. _Shit. _"What... what exactly would I have noticed?"

"Blood magic," she says, "also requires very specific circumstances. It can only be done in close proximity, and the blood used to channel the magic must make contact with its intended target. It needs only be a small amount, even a smudge or a drop."

"Or Loki spitting blood all over me," Tony mutters. _Shit._ More shit. _Shit shit shit..._ "When I shot him..."

"But that itself would not be enough for him to keep such a strong hold on you. Once you washed the blood away, with such a great distance between you and Loki, the connection would be broken and the magic would have disintegrated. What did you do with the clothes you were wearing?"

Pressing his hand to his cheek, Tony tries to think. The clothes he was wearing... What was he even wearing? What did he do? "I don't..." That whole afternoon is such a mess of broken pieces in his mind. Irreparable shards, all out of order and incomplete. He was on the roof, and he was inside, and then Pepper... Did Pepper take his clothes? He sat in a chair in the dark, staring out the window for hours until Pepper found him. He had tea in bed. She told him what to do. He had a shower, but there's no memory of what happened to his clothes.

"I probably left them on the bathroom floor. I can't remember. But I probably left them on the floor, and Pepper would have either sent them to get cleaned or just thrown them out. But if she got them cleaned they'd still be in New York, because I didn't take much with me when I went back to Malibu."

Only a few things. A new watch. Shoes. A tie. His wallet. Not his phone. After S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interference, he got a new one. He took a notebook with a couple pages of chicken-scratch ideas and bad doodles he'd done while waiting around with Bruce on the helicarrier, and left everything else, because the last thing he'd ever want to be in his life is weighed down by a chain of sentimental objects.

Except, oh.

The shirt. The shirt he was wearing that day on the rooftop. The shirt he tore off and used to stanch the flow of Loki's blood. The shirt he stuffed in a plastic bag and tucked into a drawer and then, nine days later, took back out to put in his briefcase.

"Wait," he tells Frigga. "I kept the shirt. It was soaked in blood. But I put it in a bag and took it with me."

"Did you wash the shirt?"

He shakes his head, and it's just like seeing some hyperbolic novel come to life, the way the warm color drains from Frigga's face.

"Where did you keep it?" she whispers.

In the only place a reasonable person would keep a plastic bag full of his _lover's_ blood. "In my bedroom. In a drawer. Um. In my... underwear drawer."

There's no need, really, for Frigga to say anything more at this point. The look on her face, a haunted mingling of horror and sudden clarity, says it all. And Tony knows, deep inside, that every worry rippling through her eyes is nothing short of completely justified.

So it was blood magic. Everything Tony felt, everything he thought, everything he did since the end of July... was any of that real? Did any of that originate inside his own mind, or was it all artificially placed there by Loki's spell? Every desire and every burning need... For fuck's sake, everything he _still_ feels...

There's a difference between suspecting something and being told, with no margin for error, that the suspicion is true. Suspicion raises alarm bells and that churning and prickling precursor to fear that crawls up from the stomach into the throat. Logically, the next step – confirmed knowledge – should bring terror. But it doesn't. Instead, by emotional alchemy, knowledge transforms fear into rage. And it's the kind of rage that rises hot and fast under the pressure of betrayal, and floods Tony's mind with scalding red.

He suspected magical interference when Thor first mentioned the possibility, and now he knows. But he also suspected long ago that Loki didn't trust him. All the wishful thinking in the world couldn't get him to let go of the lingering suspicion that Loki cared about him only a fraction as much as he cared about Loki. There was always that little speck of fear, tiny but persistent, that everything Loki did was a lie. Hollow actions to embroider the infinite Mobius web of deception that makes up Loki's soul. He suspected all that.

Now that he _knows, _the rage comes pouring in. Loki used him.

"So what does it mean?" he asks, fighting to keep his voice level. He wins halfway. The rage takes the other half. "My entire reason for coming here, was that all Loki? Is that how it works? His blood magic has some kind of hold on me that _forces_ me to try to get back to him?"

"I do not know," Frigga replies, stepping closer as if to comfort him, though how's that supposed to work when the last thing he wants is to be close to anybody right now? Tony steps back. She stays where she is, not pushing the newly erected boundary, though she keeps speaking. "I cannot see the spell, and as such have no way to know what he has done. But I am sure his only intent was to keep you close to him."

No, that doesn't quell the anger at all. "Or he needed a get out of jail free card," Tony spits. "He wanted to make sure I'd come get him." Because Loki doesn't trust anyone and never leaves anything to chance. This is just another vein in his intricately interwoven plan.

"Perhaps," Frigga allows.

Tony doesn't wait for the 'but' he knows is coming. Fuck, it's all too much, all these thoughts flaring and crashing in spectacular chaos. Loki used him. Deceived and manipulated him. Chained him with blood magic and dragged him across the depths of space, and now he's so mired in this damn maze of plots and lies and secrets that he can't even see the end of it, let alone find his way out... "I need to go," he cuts in before Frigga has a chance to continue.

"I do not think that is wise right now, Tony Stark," she says, and steps back so she's blocking the path.

'Wise' can go to hell. "I need to see Loki."

"And I think you should wait a while before you do that."

"Why?!" he snaps. "Do you think I need to calm down? You think Loki deserves for me to be _calm _after what he did?!"

"No," she answers. Her head shakes in a slow, gentle movement. "I think _you_ deserve to let yourself think this over before you do anything you regret."

"I don't think regret is really my biggest concern right now."

"You're angry."

"Should I _not_ be angry?"

She sighs. "That is not what I said."

"And should I just accept this and be fine with Loki screwing with my mind and making decisions for me? Because _that's _what pisses me off here! Not his lying, because I'm used to that. And not his schemes, because God knows I'm used to those, too. It's the fact that _he doesn't trust me_! It's the fact that he doesn't think enough of me to bother telling me about his plans, or better yet, asking me if I want to go along with them! He could have asked me! Just asked! He could have asked me to come find him in Asgard instead of throwing away any hint of trust and making that choice for me!"

Instead of pulling him along like a dog on a leash, unable to find his own direction. And it makes him too angry to even...

"I need to go. Sorry."

This time, Frigga doesn't stand in the way. She lets him pass, and watches without comment as he shoves his hair back from his burning forehead with one hand while clenching the other in a fist that bites his palm with crescent fingernails. It's not until he's already heading down the willow-lined path that she calls out to his retreating back.

"I am not asking you to forgive him, Tony stark."

_Forgive him._ Tony grunts. As things stand? Not damn likely. He stops and turns to look at Frigga, framed like a silhouette against the bright sunlight. "Don't worry. I won't."

"I love my son, but love and blind forgiveness are two very different things. One needs not always go hand in hand with the other. So I do not ask you to forgive him for what he's done. Not yet. I only ask that you give him the chance to _earn_ your forgiveness."


	6. The Venn Diagram of Tony's Life

It's a long walk back to his bedroom, through all the snaking garden paths and cavernous palace halls, past a phalanx of statues with unnerving jeweled eyes and up staircase after exhausting staircase. By the time Tony throws his cape across the end of his bed, most of his anger has burned its way out, leaving frustration and a hollow sense of disappointment behind. There's some anger still, yes, since it'll take a lot more than walking before he sees the end of that, but the roaring inferno has dwindled down into a few tenacious embers.

Frigga was right. He does deserve to let himself think this whole disaster through before flying off to scream at Loki over things he doesn't even fully understand yet. Things that don't all line up in a neat, sensible order in his mind. No, he needs to think this through and figure out where he stands. What he feels. And are those feelings even real? Or nothing more than Loki's sly artifice? He needs a game plan before walking into this minefield, because it's a sure bet Loki has one. He needs is a list of facts to help him weed out the fiction.

Okay, so. It's logic time. Logic is serene and gray and uncolored by the explosive shades of emotion, and hell if Tony doesn't need that soothing monochrome now amid the chaos in his head. He sinks onto the bed, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, and draws in a steadying breath. Facts. Facts? What are the facts, camouflaged between all the lies?

Fact one: he was willing to risk a hell of a lot to save Loki long before any blood magic came into play. There's still an echo of a feeling ringing through his body: a memory of when Natasha had him in the tower in New York. He would have done anything then to get to Loki. He would do anything now to get to Loki. Has that really changed? Or only the stakes involved? Rebelling against the laws of S.H.I.E.L.D. versus rebelling against the laws of physics. Either way, it was for the same end cause. He needed to get to Loki.

But would he have been so desperate to make his way to Asgard without Loki's interference? That's the real question. Instead of driving himself to the edge of insanity obsessing over Asgard for three months, would he have burned out and given up? Worked on the problem to the best of his ability for a few weeks, then resignedly decided to wait around for Thor to show up on Earth again? Would he have forced himself to lock away all thoughts of Loki in the extensive archive of failed relationships and moved on to something and someone new?

Fact two: he'll never know. Maybe it all would've played out the same without Loki's magic. Maybe Tony's natural stubbornness would have kept him going until he found a way back to Loki. Or maybe his natural lack of long-term attention span would've coaxed him to abandon a project where he was making no progress. Maybe curiosity and nagging hatred of leaving unfinished business would have had him revisit it in a year or two. Maybe all roads would've led to Asgard eventually, whether in three months or three years.

It's just that he doesn't know. And will never know. Loki took all those possibilities away. Loki took his _choice_ away. Loki made that decision for him, altering the course of his life forever, and did it without his consent, without his knowledge, and without any speck of trust.

On second thought, more than just embers of anger remain.

But then, fact three: it's been done. Loki did what he did, Tony came to Asgard, and there's no way to turn back and reverse either of those actions. Nothing anyone can do can change what went down. Which leaves fact four: all Tony can do now is decide where he wants to go from here.

Fact five: he wants to go back to California.

Fact six: despite all the rage, despite all the shit, and despite everything else, he still wants to take Loki with him.

That hasn't changed. The need to get to Loki hasn't changed. The need to _be with_ Loki hasn't changed. It's still there, just like before. Just like when he was in the tower, or in Phoenix, or back in the tower, or in the helicarrier, with his arm wrapped over Loki's lithe and enticing body as all the possibilities for the future spiraled around them. Stupid, sappy possibilities that are almost too embarrassingly saccharine for Tony to even think about in the secrecy of his own mind. Like showing Loki all the beautiful places in the world, from the high-tech neon metropolis of Tokyo to the cool seclusion of a lakeside cabin surrounded by trees. Like following up a weekend of Las Vegas glitz and mayhem with quiet days of nothing but lying around and watching all those classic movies Loki's never seen. Loki's never seen Star Wars. He's never seen The Princess Bride or 2001 or Planet of the Apes. That needs to be remedied immediately. They need to travel the world and make terrible decisions together and take tasteless photos in Rome and try mystery food in Rio and lose a small fortune in Macao.

It's so easy to imagine doing all those things. Then coming home to Malibu, unpacking, making a disaster of a dinner, failing, pitching it, ordering in, and screwing around inventing new mixed drinks before falling exhausted into bed. Loki stays by his side through all of it. And maybe the need to be with Loki is a little louder and more insistent now, helped along and amplified by any magic that may have been done, but the core of it hasn't changed at all. He wants to be with Loki. Simple as that. He also wants to punch Loki in the face and scream at him for being such an infuriating fuck, but that's something that will probably always overlap with about 90% of the wanting-to-be-with-Loki circle on the Venn diagram of Tony's life.

So he gets up from the bed, pulls off his jeans, and dresses in as much of the Asgardian clothing as he can manage by himself. Pants. Boots. Weird armor vest thing that wraps around front to back to front again and buckles in six inconvenient places. The dungeon is a long walk down too many stairs to count, and there's that inconvenient little thing where he promised Thor not to visit Loki again without permission. But a conversation needs to happen. A conversation needs to happen right now.

ooo

The same two guards Tony's seen on both previous visits stand at the dungeon door. On the right is the one he likes to think of as Big Lando, due to the man's uncanny resemblance to a six-foot-seven version of Billy Dee Williams. The other one, Jesus of Rohan, looks like he stepped down off a crucifix and into a helmet. Neither of them bothers to pay much attention to Tony or ask what he thinks he's doing as he strides on past them. They obviously didn't get the memo from Thor about visitation rights being suspended. And Tony's not stupid enough to ruin things by opening his mouth.

The wall of Loki's cell flickers in the middle, and a gap opens wide enough for Tony to pass through. Loki's in bed again this time. Pretending to be asleep. He faces the wall just like before and a blanket is pulled up over his shoulder, which rises and falls evenly with slow and measured breaths. But the hum of his energy says he's awake.

It also says he knows something's changed. The hint of guarded anxiety Tony can feel in him means he's damn well already felt the anger and frustration coursing through Tony's blood.

"So," Tony starts without bothering with any kind of greeting. "How's the plan coming?"

Loki plays his game out to the end, going through all the motions of waking up and stretching and yawning and smoothing his hair back as he sits. "Plan?" he finally asks.

"Yeah. Your plan. The one you've had going all along You know, the plan that started with the blood magic you used to make sure I'd come here to get you."

Not even a flinch. Not even the barest twitch of emotion. Loki stares back at him with a blank mask and flat eyes, almost like he knew (of course he knew) exactly what Tony came here to say.

Tony continues. "I'm assuming you have a whole plan all coiled up and ready to strike in your snaky little brain. You wouldn't have tried to bring me here if you didn't. I remember all the _relevant_ things you say, and you once told me you like to plan things out carefully. Start to finish. Isn't that right? So if we've already started, what's the next step? And what's the grand finale? I think I need to know."

"It's..." says Loki, but whatever 'it' might be is interrupted by a long sigh as he looks away. "...complicated."

"Bullshit," Tony snaps. "You know exactly what's going on. You know exactly what you're doing. And if this conversation right now with me calling you out isn't going exactly according to schedule, then at the very least it's factored into some fifth-string contingency plan you've plotted just in case. So cut the crap and let's talk to each other like grown-ups. If it's complicated, explain it. I'm a fast learner. Get talking."

"What did she say?"

Maybe Tony should have specified that when he said 'get talking' he meant for Loki to answer questions, not ask them. "By 'she' you mean your mother?"

"I certainly don't mean Thor. Though now that I think of it," Loki adds, "I'd be interested to hear his idiotic interpretation as well. But we can start with what my mother said to you. I'm sure she gave you many, many explanations for imaginary fears. What was her theory?"

Wait, how did this suddenly turn around into Loki's interrogation of Tony? "You did some kind of blood magic to keep my thoughts bound to you when you spat in my face on the roof of the tower. Is she right?"

"And? What else?"

"_Is she right_?" Tony repeats. "I'm not going through this dance with you, Loki. I'm tired of your stupid games, I'm tired of your lies, and I'm sure as fuck tired of you screwing me around. For once – just for once – I'm asking you to tell the truth. Outright. Really simple here. Yes or no: did you use your magic on me?"

Loki doesn't answer. At least, not with words. He tilts his head down in catlike indifference, staring at his hands and picking at a loose thread on his blanket and generally doing everything he can to not look anywhere near Tony's eyes.

That means 'yes', then.

"You're such a petulant child," says Tony. "And you know things are bad when that's coming from _me_, because usually I'm the one on the receiving end of accusations of childish behavior. When an irresponsible, immature asshole like me tells you you're being a baby, it's probably a sign you're the biggest damn baby in the known universe. Is it really so hard for you to grow up for a second and answer a simple question like an adult?"

"Why should I?" Loki asks, speaking to his pillow. "It's quite clear you're angry with me and have already made up your mind on my guilt."

Spoken like a true champion of playground wit. But he has a point.

"You're right," Tony concedes with a nod. "I'm angry. I'm pissed at you for what you did, and I'm pissed at myself for trusting you and expecting you to change when you've given me no indication of doing so. That's my fault there."

"You were an idiot to trust me."

"No."

Tony throws the word back so fast it might as well be a bullet, striking Loki head-on and grabbing his attention. Loki glances up with a razor-thin frown under slitted eyes. Contact once again.

"I wasn't an idiot. I was a normal, hopeful person who wanted to see the good in you. I gave you a chance. And you could have taken it, you know. You could've dropped all this shady baggage from your past and started over fresh, but I guess by now you're so used to biting the hand that feeds you that you don't know any better. Trusting doesn't make somebody an idiot, though. Abuse of trust? That does."

"Then leave!" Loki snaps, not so much a reply as a roadblock. "Go! I have no interest in hearing your speech. If I'm such a horrific disappointment to you, you need not bother wasting your time complaining to me. I know my own crimes. Leave now and spare us both the drama."

A challenge sits in his gaze, hard and inflexible as glass, and he leans forward. A snake about to strike.

(A tired, wounded, desperate snake using his last ounce of strength to keep his head held high and still put on a show of bravery when all he has left is a trickle of venom in his mouth...)

"Is that what you think?" Tony asks. Just quiet words now.

"Think what?" Loki venom-hisses in return.

"That I came down here to give you one last self-righteous lecture before I take off?"

_Give him the chance to earn your forgiveness,_ Frigga had said. _Give him the chance..._

If only Loki had any clue what that chance might look like. But his blank mask acts as too much of a blinder. Tony steps forward slowly, closing the distance between them to climb up on the end of the bed and sit once again with his back to the wall and his forearms resting on his knees. Loki watches him with what might be curiosity, or confusion, or anything else hidden behind an expressionless face.

"I'm not going," says Tony, staring right back. "Either now or, preferably, after I ream you out for a while. Because that's what I came here to do. But I'm not leaving. And you know why?"

No. Loki doesn't answer, but that's okay, because Tony didn't expect him to. Tony expected the blank look, frayed and unraveling in just the tiniest way around the edges to show a hint of uncertainty. And that's exactly what he gets.

"Here's the thing, Loki. I'm not leaving, because for some insane, misguided reason, I still have at least... I don't know... four or five good, solid flying fucks to give about you. Now you can call me an idiot for that, and I'll probably end up regretting it, but somehow... Yeah. You lied to me, you abused my trust, and I'm pretty damn mad about it. But I'm willing to give you another chance. That's why I'm down here trying to talk to you instead of just telling you to go fuck yourself while I head back home. Got it?"

Again, no answer. Just that silent stare.

"I won't go away," Tony says. "Even if that's what you're expecting. You expect me to ditch you, but that'll only justify your actions as far as you're concerned. You didn't trust me, and you think it's a good thing, too, because your twisted little mind thinks I'm going to take off once I get this slap in the face about what a shady, underhanded, manipulative weasel of a dickhat you are, right? Well no, wrong. I'm staying. Sorry, but you're going to have to learn to live with the consequences of having me stick around when I'm pissed off at you. It won't be fun. You have a long way to go before you can even scratch your ass without me suspecting you're up to something. I risked my life and fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city to find you, so it'll take a lot more than you being you for me to give up and go home now."

He waits for an answer this time, or any kind of reaction, sitting still and staring back at Loki with as blank of an expression as he can muster for himself. Counting seconds as they tick by in his head. Ten. Twenty. Twenty-eight. Loki breaks eye contact first, looking back down at his hands.

One of those hands rises to make a tentative movement in Tony's direction. But seems to have second thoughts mid-air, and falls back down into the safety of Loki's lap. It doesn't move again.

Fifty-five seconds. "Okay," says Tony, speaking to Loki's hands (since apparently they've just become the most interesting focal point in the room). "How about this. When you're ready to get over yourself and actually talk about shit, look me up. I want to know what you did, why you did it, and how woefully, lamentably, indescribably sorry you are for sneaking around and voodoo-cursing me. I want to know what your plan is. The whole plan. I know you have one, and I want you to tell me every last detail down to what color socks you'll be wearing when it goes live. I'll come back when you're ready to be honest with me. Until then?"

No use wasting time hanging around in the dungeon watching gloomy gus sulk. He'll be up in his room, channeling all this residual frustration into something useful, like putting his suit back in working order. He gets up off the bed and smooths down his shirt.

"Don't fuck with me again, Loki."

ooo

A note comes two days later.

_I wish to speak with you.  
-Loki_

Short. Sweet. To the point. For some reason, this single, terse sentence makes him feel more optimistic than if it had been a page of florid script and empty promises. At least it's probably sincere, in Loki's stunted way.

He hands the note back to a hovering servant, who takes it away on a tray just like they do in fancy movies. Then he turns his attention back to his lunch companions. He hasn't dined with Thor since that mess of a banquet, but today Frigga cleverly invited herself to eat in his room. She brought a handful of what Tony takes to be her royal entourage. Four woman and two men, all of whom have names that would sound right at home in an Ikea catalogue. Tony gets the impression they're trying to show polite interest in him, asking questions about his life and his home and his family and whether or not he has any children (oddly enough, they don't bother asking if he has a wife). Though every time he pauses too long before answering as he tries to think of how to explain his work in terms that magical space Vikings would understand, the conversation inevitably turns back to malicious gossip about who was recently seen leaving whose bedroom, and who the real father of Foo-somebody's new baby might be (apparently not her husband).

It honestly makes Tony miss Thor's awkward attempts and holding a conversation through a mouthful of food.

He swallows a yawn and leans back in his chair with a cup of that cherry brandy Thor brought him on his first day in Asgard. It's not so bad now that he knows what to expect. Strong and sticky-sweet, like cough syrup, but it'll do. Over in the corner, all the pieces of his armor are cleaned up to the best of his ability and arranged in careful sequence on the floor. Inspection confirmed his fears that the wiring's shot to shit all down the right arm, but the left sustained mostly cosmetic damage. A few more tweaks to the circuitry and it should be back in working order. He should be able to repair the right arm if he steals parts and extra wiring from both legs, which will leave him with bare bones on the lower half but functional weaponry up top. Not ideal, but better than nothing. It's the helmet that'll be the real problem. With the central computer fried it's nothing more than an ostentatious metal hat, and he won't know if he can get any of the systems up and running again until-

"Tony Stark?" says Frigga, jerking his attention back to the group.

The front legs of his chair slam down on the hard floor a little too loudly as he leans back into the table. "Yes. Sorry. Ma'am."

"I recall Thor mentioning to me something of a magical amulet you possess. Would you care to tell us about it?"

Magical... What? "Uh..." With everybody staring at him, it's hard enough to form a coherent thought, let alone guess at what Frigga means by 'magical amulet'. "I'm not sure I..."

"Here," she says, lightly touching the center of her chest.

Right. Right right right. That magical amulet. "Sure," he begins. "Magical amulet. Right. Um. It's a... It's actually a magnet. Thing is, for reasons I don't want to get into in too much detail, I have a lot of shrapnel in my body. To manage that, I created a high-powered electromagnet run off experimental energy reactor technology, and what it does is... uh..."

Oh, this is going well. It's going real well, if those raised eyebrows and confused little frowns are any indication. But how do you explain an arc reactor to aliens who've advance so far past the need for something as primitive as electricity? Especially when a lot of Earth people have trouble understanding the scientific concept?

So he starts again. "I was stabbed with a Morgul blade. That's a cursed knife possessed only by the foulest of dark sorcerers. When I was stabbed, the tip shattered and left tiny pieces embedded in my chest. Those pieces are constantly trying to reach my heart, and if even one of them does, I'll die and become a wraith. The amulet emits a protective energy to keep that from happening."

"How dreadful!" gasps one of the women: the one who looks like an Amazonian Reese Witherspoon in a yellow fairy gown.

"Can it be healed?" somebody else asks.

Tony shrugs. "Maybe in the future? We don't currently have the ability. I've heard it can be healed by the power of the elves, but Midgard is a little short on elves anytime outside of the Christmas season."

One of the men shakes his head. "No, I would not trust the elves. Their magic is fickle and unreliable."

"I'll... keep that in mind," says Tony. Of course they have elves. Why wouldn't they have elves?

"Where did you get the amulet?"

"I built it. Went through a couple different iterations before finalizing the one I have now. The first two versions were powered by a palladium core, which, as it turns out, is highly toxic when inserted into your body. So to fix things I actually had to synthesize an unknown element that... uh..." They're all staring again. "...that you don't care about. Right. Well, I made it. With science. Let's just leave things there."

"That's very interesting," says Amazonian Tila Tequila, sitting next to Amazonian Reece Witherspoon. "But I just remembered," she goes on, "the other night after the banquet I saw-"

Some girl making out with some guy (or maybe another girl; the names sure don't tell Tony anything). Well, that little diversion into a topic he cared about was nice while it lasted. Now they're straight back at the who's who of Asgardian gossip. He tips his chair up on two legs again and looks over to the armor, but this time he isn't even able to start ignoring the conversation properly before Frigga interrupts.

"If you'll all excuse me?"

When the queen of Asgard stands, the whole table stands with her, respectfully shutting their mouths and setting down their drinks. Frigga shakes out her skirts and strikes a queenly pose. The smile she wears looks like she stole it right out from under the nose of an elementary school teacher with saint-like patience.

Maybe she hates this idiotic chit-chat as much as Tony does.

"Thank you for a lovely meal," she tells them. "And thank you, Tony Stark, for allowing us to dine with you in your chamber today. That was very kind."

"My pleasure," he says. It only sounds sixty percent sarcastic.

"Now unfortunately I must be off, as I have many duties to attend, but please do continue without me. Although you may also have other engagements, Tony Stark?"

He catches the flicker of her eyes over to the servant standing by the door, still holding his golden tray. Why, yes. He does, in fact, have other engagements, now that she mentions it. "I'm afraid I do. Things to do, people to see..." Dubiously repentant gods to visit. "May I escort you out?"

"Yes," she answers, offering her arm. "Thank you so much."

Nobody else follows them. Not that Tony really minds; if he has to leave people unsupervised in his bedroom with all his stuff, he's glad it's these oblivious, self-centered airheads rather than anyone who might snoop and break things. They seem harmless enough. Harmless and painfully uninteresting.

Frigga speaks as soon as the two of them are out of earshot. "Are you still angry with Loki?"

Simple as it would be to just tell her 'no' and be done with it, something stops him. He's still angry with Loki. Not nearly as much as he was, and not nearly as much as he should be, but the fundamental pilot light of anger is still there. Deep inside. And he doesn't feel like lying to Frigga. "Yeah," he replies after a cautious pause. "A little."

"Have you seen him? Did he say anything to you of the magic?"

"I saw him. He didn't say boo about the magic."

She sighs. So Tony's not the only person Loki's been disappointing lately. "I see. Well. I take it you are about to see him again."

"I may have given him an ultimatum last time: either he spills everything on what he did and why, or I'm not coming back. I'm willing to give him a chance to earn my forgiveness, just like you asked. But only if he shows me he _wants_ that chance."

"Loki has had a difficult life, Tony Stark."

"Yeah I bet he has," Tony mutters. And seriously, he means to say that to himself, but the bitterness takes hold and it ends up louder than intended.

"You may not believe-"

Tony stops mid-stride, letting Frigga's arm slip from his. "I may not believe because... why? Because he's a magical prince who grew up in a castle with servants and everything he could possibly wish for? And his life should be perfect? No, actually that's the part I understand. You know how? Because I had a pretty difficult life, too. My parents were never around, I was bullied in school, and I spent all my time building and programming computers to distract from how miserable and lonely I was. I grew up with a bad attitude and a drinking problem and almost killed myself drunk driving when I was sixteen because I didn't know how to fit into the world. But after all that, I think I still managed to turn out okay in the end."

"It's not quite the same..." Frigga tries.

"But it _is_," says Tony. "Having a difficult life or a shitty childhood or being treated like hell by everyone around you because you're different isn't an excuse for turning into a raging asshole. You always have a _choice_ of letting that stuff get to you and drag you down. I made a conscious decision after one particularly horrible point in my life to put away who I'd been and what I'd been through, and focus on who I wanted to become and what I wanted to accomplish. Loki could've done the same. But he chose to hold on to his grudges and keep them locked inside, like they were somehow protecting him when really all they were doing was making things worse. So no, I really don't want to hear any 'poor little rich boy' BS excusing Loki's behavior. I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, and _written _the book. And that means I'm out of sympathy for people who shit all over others and then try to worm their way out of responsibility by claiming _they're_ the victim. Being shit on in the past doesn't give you free rein to spread that shit around in the future."

Quietly, Frigga steps forward to take Tony's hands in hers. First one. Then the next. Cupping them between her palms like she's holding something precious, she focuses her gaze with a low sigh. And lets a long beat drag out before speaking.

"But perhaps," she eventually says, "it might earn him a little understanding?"

_From somebody who's freed himself and might be able to show Loki the way out,_ is the unspoken implication, which Tony can feel loud and clear in the way she gently squeezes his hands.

"Like I said," Tony tells her. "I'm willing to give him a chance at forgiveness. And understanding, and sympathy, and whatever the hell else he needs. But only if I think he wants it."

With a tiny nod, she looks up to meet his eyes. "I can assure you, Tony Stark, with absolute certainty, that he wants all of those things."

_I'm sure he does_, Tony thinks as he watches Frigga's shimmering, brocade-clad form swirl past the curve of a monolithic pillar and disappear around a corner. _Somewhere deep down where his last shred of innocence and goodness still knows right from wrong._

That part of Loki wants forgiveness. Question is, is his hardened remainder willing to _admit_ he wants it?


	7. Fact that We're Terrible People

He's so beautiful. The way his skin glows flawless as a diamond. The way his filmy green shirt falls open to his waist, showing the liquid ripples of an equally filmy sarong pooled in his lap and tied at the hip. The way he leans back in bed with one hand tucked behind his neck and the other resting delicately on the bare thigh peeking out past the sarong's edge. The way his eyes glitter with an impure secret beneath half-closed lids. The way his lips part and echo the same. The way the warm, pink flush in his cheeks and the damp sheen in his uncombed bedroom hair say he was just in the bath and has barely had time to dress before arranging himself so artfully amid scattered pillows and tangled sheets.

He's so beautiful. And he knows it. And he's doing it on purpose. The manipulative little shit.

"So," Tony says, taking a firm stance in the middle of the cell and clamping his arms over his chest before he can do anything stupid, like accidentally fall into Loki's bed and pledge eternal devotion. "You have something to tell me."

"Mm," Loki replies, smiling and savoring the sound and rolling it on his tongue before releasing it into the air. "Come here, Tony Stark."

Tony shakes his head. "Sorry, no. First you talk. Then I'll come anywhere you want."

Pouting, Loki slides down onto the mattress, his sarong hitching up indecently high on his naked legs. "I can only talk to you over here."

"Why? Can you only whisper your apology? Afraid somebody else might overhear in this bustling hub of social interaction?"

"Yes," says Loki as his back arches up off the bed. "Come here."

"You're trying to sex your way out of trouble."

He bites his lip over a wordless hum of agreement.

Really, some part of Tony's brain wonders why he's not giving up and going along with this. He could always go along with this for now and then get Loki to talk afterwa- _No let's just stop things right there,_ says the not completely fucking nuts part of his brain. _Don't even consider it. That's just what Loki the snake wants._

"How about this," he tries instead. "I'll come over there if you sit like a normal person instead of flopping around like a hentai mermaid. Sit up. I'll sit next to you. You can talk. Okay?"

Maybe it'll be okay. Loki does sit up. He sits up very nicely, rearranging his sarong, and he strikes a pinup pose with his knees together and his ankles crossed. Sultry look.

Devious fucker. But Tony fulfils his end of the bargain and plops his ass down on the bed at Loki's side, leaving a foot and a half of space between them. Eighteen inches of air will be a sufficient barrier, won't it? "So spill the beans," he says. "You wished to speak with me? Speak on. I'm listening."

It's like all the playful good will in the air is leeched away, ounce by ounce, the second Loki drops his goofy femme fatale act. It's replaced by a long sigh and a stubborn silence. Loki's shoulders sag. He pulls in a breath, and holds it, and lets it out again, and Tony lets him. Not going to push it. Loki'll only talk when he's good and ready, or he won't talk at all.

After what has to be at least five minutes of fragile consideration, he finally – _finally_ – speaks.

"I never meant for you to come to Asgard."

"Oh?" says Tony. That's all. Just a single sound. Let Loki lead this conversation and see where it goes.

"I didn't..."

He stops again. Another minute of silence where he pushes his damp hair back and momentarily hides his face behind his hand.

"I didn't mean for you to come here. The magic wasn't supposed to last this long. A few days... I thought you would come to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility where Thor took me. That's all. Not to Asgard. I don't even understand how the magic could have endured so long after you washed the blood from your clothes."

Well, Tony does. But he's not going to divulge anything about that just yet. "Why? Why use magic at all? Why not just, you know, _ask_ me? Like a friend, instead of assuming you need to force me into something?"

"It was a foolish, panicked plan," Loki says, which doesn't exactly answer the question, but at least he's still talking. "I did what I thought I could. But it failed, because I wrongly guessed S.H.I.E.L.D. would insist on keeping me in prison a little longer. I didn't expect they'd listen to Thor's demands that we immediately take the Tesseract back to Asgard. I only... only wanted you to come to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, at which point I'd make up some excuse about having been mind-controlled by Thanos, until the blast of energy from your gun shattered that hold."

"And you think they'd believe that?" Tony asks when Loki pauses yet again.

"Thor would."

"Fury isn't Thor."

"I was also prepared to bargain my knowledge and aid against Thanos in exchange for freedom. Everything I know. And I know quite a lot, as it turns out."

"You already made that bargain once," says Tony. "You offered everything you knew about the Tesseract in exchange for S.H.I.E.L.D. not going Call of Duty all over you."

Loki sighs, as if Tony's missing something incredibly obvious in this hypothetical scenario. "That was the _Tesseract_. Thanos is very different."

"No, my point is, you bargained with them once, shared some of your information, and then stabbed everyone in the back when we thought you were on our side. Something tells me they might not have fallen for that again. Humans aren't as stupid as you seem to think, Loki. I mean," he amends, "you do have your Honey Boo Boos and your Kardashians messing with the planet's median IQ, but the people at S.H.I.E.L.D. are pretty smart as far as your average everyday humans go. The best they'd give you at this point for all your intel is probably a private cell so you don't have to take a dump under the watchful eye of some burly, tattooed white supremacist."

"And that is why I needed you," Loki continues, still in that tone of stating the obvious. "You were the only one on the rooftop that day, Tony Stark, until Agent Romanoff unwisely attempted to intervene. I needed you to come, but I needed you to come on your own. I could not ask you because..."

Ah. So that's where this is going. "You needed me to tell them your sob story," Tony mutters. Everything Loki said on the roof... Loki couldn't tell S.H.I.E.L.D. that himself. It needed to come from the closest thing he could get to an impartial third party. "You needed me to show up unexpectedly to tell them how well behaved and un-sociopathic you are when you're not backed into a corner. That you only did what you did because you thought you had no choice. Is that it?"

Loki doesn't answer. He just looks away. His classic silent 'yes'.

Would that have worked on S.H.I.E.L.D.? Hard to say. Tony's testimony in conjunction with Loki's brainwash defense and info on the Thanos threat might've gotten him out of the deepest of the deep shit. Maybe enough to forego prison in exchange for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s equivalent to community service. Especially if Thor jumped in there too, backing up anything Tony said with his own rose-colored claims of how Loki used to be such a nice boy.

"Then what?" Tony asks. "You get out of trouble with S.H.I.E.L.D., but I bet Thor still wants to take you back to Asgard."

"Thor wanted to take the _Tesseract_ back to Asgard," Loki corrects. "If S.H.I.E.L.D. allowed him to take it, Thor may have let me remain on Midgard."

It takes Tony a second to realize what Loki just said. Let him remain on Midgard. _Let him_...

"It would have been an ideal solution," Loki adds, pushing on ahead. "Thor takes the Tesseract back to Asgard to stand vigilant against the possibility of war with Thanos. Heimdall keeps watch over Midgard for the same. Thanos would eventually come for it. And come for me, but at least we would have time to prepare and strategize."

"And that was your plan all along?" Tony asks, staring hard at Loki's flatly emotionless profile. (He's still so beautiful.) "Stay on Earth when all this was over?"

This time, Loki doesn't look away. He doesn't move at all. Not even a blink, not even a breath. "I thought I told you," he eventually says, "that I never planned to leave."

Tony nods. "Yeah. I remember. It's just that you'll have to forgive me for doubting you, because now I can't tell if that meant you planned to stay and rule the planet as a conquering overlord, or if you meant you planned to stay with me, or... if you're just saying that because you think it's what I want to hear."

"I never lied to you!" Loki snaps, suddenly turning on him. "Is that all you see in me? Some wretched liar who-"

"Maybe you didn't tell an outright lie," Tony snaps right back, "but you sure let me believe a lot of things that aren't true, and you-"

"Like what?!"

"-keep enough secrets to make you the grand master of lying by omission-"

"Like what?!" Loki repeats, shouting out his frustration. "_What_ did I let you believe?!"

"Well, for starters, there was that minor incident where you started an alien invasion of New York City after convincing everyone you'd given up on being an evil dickwad."

"I had no choice! I told you my entire reasoning! For the good of all involved, I had no choice but to do what I did!"

Tony almost laughs, but catches himself in time. This isn't funny. Not funny at all. "For the _good_ of all involved? You actually think you were doing the right thing by almost starting a war?"

"Yes!" Loki hisses as he jumps to his feet. "I told you about Thanos! I warned what he would try to do if I failed to claim the Tesseract for him! He would annihilate your pathetic realm and every human life in it! Did I not tell you a few deaths – even a few _million_ deaths – would be preferable to the unfathomable destruction Thanos would wreak? _Why can you not trust me?!_"

The word slides sharp as a knife between Tony's ribs, hitting something vulnerable and unprepared inside. _Trust_. Loki can't really think... "No." And he stands too, stepping up close to Loki, pulled in by anger solidifying like a magnet. "No way! You are _not _turning this around on me, you slick bastard! _I'm _the one who doesn't trust _you?!_ Since when do you have the right to accuse me of-"

"_You_ are the one always suspicious of _me_!" snarls Loki. "_You_ are the one who finds it so impossible to look at me without judgment and doubt! _You_ are the one who questions every decision I make, who second-guesses everything I say, and who needs _proof of my motives_ whenever I do anything you don't understand! So why should you demand my trust when it is painfully clear you would not extend me the courtesy of yours?!"

"Bullshit! You're twisting cause and effect to make your point! I wouldn't doubt you or question your actions if you hadn't already shown me that everything about you is a fucking hurricane of deceit and manipulation! You need to _earn_ trust, Loki, not just show up and expect it to be handed to you on a silver platter!"

"Yes, guilty until proven innocent, isn't that how it is with you?! Why bother to listen to anything I have to say when you've already cast your judgments? You think yourself so morally superior, but the sad truth is, Tony Stark, you are no different from me! You lie and cheat and use people to your own advantage as much as I do. You are greedy and selfish and arrogant beyond anything I have seen in any person in my life, yet think yourself better than them all. The only difference between us is that _I accept those traits in you_, and admit to them in myself, yet you are so horrifically offended by the very idea that you persecute me and blindly refuse to acknowledge your own fault!"

It happens so fast, before Tony can even think about what he's doing. The coppery metallic anger is so thick in his throat, rising up and filling his mouth with its stinging bitterness. Crowding his ears with a high, whining pitch. Seeping cloudiness into his eyes and tightening around his brain. It happens so fast, and in one second his hand is down at his side, clenching into a fist so tense it shakes. In another second that fist hits Loki's cheek. But how it gets there... Well, that all happens too fast.

(The impact jars a memory into the front of his mind. Something he'd rather forget: he's maybe four years old and Nanny's telling him to go upstairs, go to his room, because he can hear his parents fighting. Screaming awful things at each other. He shouldn't watch that. But he peeks out around the corner and down the stairs anyway as his mom storms into the front hall and tells the driver she's leaving because dad's drunk again and she knows he wasn't working late, he was fucking his secretary. That dumb slut Charlene. When dad tries to grab her arm to stop her, she shoves him away, and he hits her hard enough to split her lip. Then she leaves as dad breaks down and slumps to the floor and babbles incoherent, whisky-fueled apologies and swears to God he loves her so much, he'll never do it again, never cheat on her again, never hit her again. But mom still leaves. Though she eventually comes back. She always comes back. And it always happens again despite the empty promises. Year after year, until Tony's old enough to understand what words like 'drunk' and 'fuck' and 'slut' mean. Old enough to worry that maybe one summer he'll come home from school to find out mom left for good. She never does, though.)

(And then a recent memory. Earlier this year. This time he's the drunk one and he's started a fight with Pepper over something pointless. And the anger's rising inside, that blinding rage, and he can feel himself losing control, and it's only fortunate timing that she calls him a pathetic jerk and slams the bathroom door in his face and locks herself inside before...)

When he snaps back to the present, Loki's still standing there. Shocked expression on his face. A little streak of blood across his cheek, shimmering red against milky pale like a glaring accusation.

_Now look what you've done,_ it says.

_Yes,_ Tony's mind answers hollowly back. _Now look what I've done._ And all that predatory rage deflates so quickly, leaving just a sloshing, unsteady sickness behind in the pit of his stomach. _Now look what I've gone and done..._

"Loki," he says, because that's all that'll come out.

Slowly, Loki raises his own hand to his cheek, wiping the red smudge clean away. It's only then that Tony looks down at his hand, feeling the sudden throb and sting in his knuckle where the skin split. Blood's dripping down his fingers.

"Did that make you feel any better?" Loki asks. He scowls when he speaks, but his voice sounds only halfway as sharp as it should.

Tony takes a step back as he shakes his head, and sinks back down onto the bed. No, that didn't make him feel better. Not in any way. It just dredged up a lot of memories and fears he's been trying like hell to leave in the past.

After a moment, Loki sits beside him. But doesn't speak. Just sits, silently, without even looking over Tony's way. While Tony tries to think of anything better to say than 'I'm sorry'. Which he can't, so that'll have to do.

"Srry." The word comes out in a closed-lipped mumble as he looks down at his broken, blood-stained skin.

"It's fine."

"No it's not," he says, slowly and stupidly. "It's really not."

"You hurt yourself," Loki murmurs, reaching down to touch the back of his hand.

"I hit you."

"It doesn't matter."

But it does. And maybe Loki doesn't get that, but it sure fucking matters to Tony. Because now there's a memory stuck in his head, and a scene he keeps replaying over and over, and the past is blurring into the present as the two collide. "What are we even doing?" he asks.

Loki's hand hasn't moved from his. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." _Oh hell, why is it so hard to say even the simplest little thing?_ "Loki, this is a disaster. We're..." _A disaster. _"We can't even _talk_ to each other. You tell me nothing at all, and let's be honest: I can't do anything better than snarky banter with you. We try to actually work out our problems, and what happens? You go on the offensive shooting everything I say back at me, and I end up getting so mad I can't even stop myself from punching you. That's not normal. It's _not fine_. I don't care what you say. I don't _want_ it to be normal or fine. I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be stuck in that loop of always fucking up and apologizing only to fuck up again."

Like his parents. Like he came so close to falling into with Pepper. Like he tried so hard to avoid all his life, keeping his distance from anyone out of fear of how it might end up.

"Why not?" asks Loki.

"Are you serious?" Tony answers, looking up to meet Loki's eyes. "_'Why not?_' You have to ask why I don't want to let myself turn into some violent prick?"

Loki shrugs. "If that's who you are."

"It's _not_ who I am. It's who I try very hard not to be."

"All the same, is there any true purpose in denying this aspect of yourself? Fighting so hard against what sits, ever-present, below the surface?"

Loki says that as if Tony's trying to hide something quirky and innocent, like being a secret fan of country music or Meg Ryan movies. Not something dangerous and explosive that might consume him inside-out. And anyway, how did things turn around to become about him again? This is supposed to be about Loki. It's Loki's confessional hour. Not yet another episode of every damn thing wrong with Tony Stark.

"Okay, I got it," he says. "I'm a terrible person. I'm an asshole for not trusting you even though you give me no reason to, and I'm an asshole for pretending I'm a decent human being instead of letting loose and hitting you whenever I feel like it."

"Better me than anyone else," is Loki's reply. "You cannot hurt me. No matter your rage, it will have little effect. So perhaps, if you let yourself go, once you've broken your knuckles enough times, one day you'll realize that violence gets you nowhere and the desire will wear thin and evaporate."

"And maybe," Tony counters, "one day you'll realize that lying to me and trying to manipulate your way into getting what you want works a lot less well than just being honest in the first place."

Slowly, Loki nods. "Maybe." But it's pretty clear he means 'no'. They both mean 'no', because everyone knows these kinds of tragic flaws never change. They can only be controlled. If you're lucky. You just have to suck it up and try to cope with the hand you're dealt.

And speaking of... Tony's hand still stings like a bitch. He tucks it under his opposite arm, squeezing it under his bicep to put pressure on the cut, but that doesn't help much. Well, whatever. He damn well deserves this pain anyway. "I really am a terrible person," he mutters.

"No, you're not," says Loki.

"Yeah I am. And for the record, so are you. We're both terrible people. Why do you even put up with me?"

He hears Loki's answer in his head a fraction of a second before Loki actually speaks. It's just that predictable from the God of Eternal Truth Evasion. "Why do _you_ put up with _me_?"

"Dunno," says Tony. "Maybe because you're a smokin' hot sex maniac? I've always been partial to those. But you're also a total basket case, so I don't have to worry about dragging you down to my level. You're already so fucked up I can't possibly be a bad influence on you. It's kind of liberating, to tell the truth."

"Always such an eloquent romantic," Loki replies through a wry smile.

Yeah, that's Tony all over. Eloquence and romance. "Think of it this way, then: I can be myself with you. My terrible, judgmental self. And I guess that means I should probably let you be your sneaky, manipulative self with me."

The snort Loki replies with is almost a laugh. "What was it you called me? A 'hurricane of deceit'?"

"Yeah, that," Tony says with a nod. "But see, I know what you are, and you know what I am, and I'm still here and you're still here, and I guess... I guess I can come to terms with the fact that you'll always lie to me. And I'll always get mad and overreact and probably punch you and break my hand and mope about it. But maybe you're right. Maybe it's better if we stop trying to suppress all our worst aspects and just go with whatever the hell happens. Go nuts. No more boundaries. Nothing but unfiltered fuckery."

"No." Loki shifts on the bed, just a little closer. "That's a terrible idea."

"Which goes nicely with the recently established fact that we're terrible people."

_You're an idiot_, Loki's wordless shake of the head seems to say. So Tony slides an arm around Loki's waist, waiting for the inevitable exasperated shove away. Except this time it's only half-hearted, barely more than a lazy swipe. Almost affectionate. (Affectionate by Loki standards, anyway.)

"Or," Tony quietly offers when Loki's hand falls down to rest momentarily on his knee, "We can try something really crazy and forgive each other for everything that's happened up to right now and start again. Try to not be total bastards this time around. I forgive you for trying to enslave the earth and the whole blood magic cock-up, you forgive me for trying to kill you with a HYDRA gun. That kind of thing."

"Hm," says Loki.

"Is that a good or bad 'hm'?"

"Contemplative 'hm'. I suppose it's not the worst of ideas. Certainly no worse than being our terrible selves."

Tony could probably answer that with some zinger of a comment. He could laugh or smirk or something stupid like that, like he usually does. But instead his right hand's skimming its way up Loki's back, under that filmy green shirt. Fingertips brushing satin skin and contours of muscle and bone. Finding Loki's shoulder and neck with a gentle, coaxing squeeze. He leans in, pressing his lips soft against Loki's, though it's not a kiss. That's not allowed, here in the dungeon, with all the weight of the laws of Asgard bearing down on them from above. It's just a touch. Nose to nose and chin to chin. Not moving. Just an innocent touch. Sharing their breath.

"You never did answer the question about why you put up with me," says Tony.

"Well..." Loki replies, rolling his tongue over his teeth, which Tony can feel it through his skin. Like he's looking for hidden words too reluctantly stubborn to leave the safety of his mouth. "You claim to be a terrible person, but as it stands... You're my person. The only one I have. So."

"So you put up with me because you have no better option."

But that's not really it. That's not what Loki means in his reluctant words, through that wavering tone of voice. It's not an insult or a condemnation. It's unconditional acceptance. Nothing more and nothing less.

And Tony can live with that.

"I really need to get you out of here, don't I?" he mumbles against Loki's cheek.

Loki's breath, an affirmative _mm_, answers softly in his ear. "How?"

"You really don't have a plan?"

"No."

Shit. "It's just that you always seem to have a plan for everything."

"My plan was having you find a way to free me."

More shit. Tony pulls back far enough to look Loki in the eye. "I should warn you: most of my plans involve blowing stuff up. I do have a partially assembled, partially working Iron Man suit upstairs. But I'm thinking in this case it'd be better to talk to Thor and see if I can grovel your way out."

"I might prefer explosions," Loki says. He's probably scowling, but all Tony can see are narrowed eyes and a knotted brow.

"And I might prefer not being on the run from the law with you again," says Tony. "As much fun as it was last time, let's not push our luck. Running from S.H.I.E.L.D. was hard enough. Running from all of Asgard sounds like a death wish. Just let me talk to Thor. I have a couple tricks up my sleeve."

By which he means he has a couple good lines he thought of while lying in the bath, saved up for this very occasion. But they might work. If he learned anything about Thor during their time spent together, it's that the big lug has a soft spot the size of a golden retriever when it comes to his little brother. Any hardened veneer will crack with enough prodding. All he needs to do is convince Thor of a couple key facts, and Loki could walk free. Or at least free-ish.

And if that fails?

He turns his head enough to survey the walls of Loki's cell. They look pretty solid. But then again, so did that cave in Afghanistan.

If negotiations fail, there'll always be the classic jail-break scenario to back him up.

ooo

"Why do you continue to defy my commands, Tony Stark?!"

Tony waits a second, biting down on the sides of his tongue before answering, because really, that could be considered a rhetorical question. "Uh," he eventually settles on saying, "I had your mom's permission."

"Loki is in prison!" Thor shouts.

"I know. I was there. That's why you're getting mad at me, remember?"

"He must be punished for his crimes!"

"Again, I know. And I'm not going to argue with you on that. Loki screwed up and he needs to learn a lesson about how to play nice. But I've been thinking and I have a couple ideas in that area, which is why I'm here to talk to you."

Tony gestures to one of the seats in Thor's office, which Thor takes, if only because in that moment he looks too stunned to think of doing anything else. "But..." he says. "No, you're here talking to me because I demanded your presence!"

"Coincidence," Tony says, taking the other chair. "I was actually on my way to talk to you when your hired goon came up and demanded my presence. See, here's what I think." He leans forward with his elbows on the table that separates him from Thor, weaving his fingers together in that confident, authoritative gesture his dad always used to use. "I think putting Loki in prison is about the worst thing you can do."

The reaction he's expecting to that statement is either an explosive bout of rage or shocked silence with the implication of 'are you crazy'. He gets number two. Thor's face screws up in a look that combines the anger of a snarling frown with the confusion of a deeply furrowed brow, but he can't seem to find anything to say, which gives Tony the opportunity to keep going.

"The thing is, keeping Loki locked up in that cell isn't doing you any favors. In fact, it's hurting you. The longer Loki stays, he more time he has to nurse his grudge and reflect on how much he despises everyone for putting him in there. And if anybody can hold onto a grudge for the next thousand or so years until you finally let him go, it's Loki. I will bet you any money he'll pretend to be reformed after a while, only to screw you over in the most magnificent way possible once you think it's safe to give him a second chance. Am I right?"

"I won't-" Thor tries, but Tony's too quick.

"You will. You know it. I know it. Eventually your big brotherly feelings will get the better of you and you'll start to think that maybe you were too hard on him and you should give him the benefit of the doubt. Don't deny it."

Letting his arms flop down into his lap, Thor sighs. Yeah, he knows it.

"So," says Tony, "what you need to do is figure out a way to punish Loki without keeping him locked away in the dungeon where all he's going to do is spend every waking moment plotting out elaborate ways to kill you the second he's free."

"He might not-"

Again, Tony just has to cut Thor off right there. "Yes. He will. You know it, I know it, he knows it, _cows_ know it. If you keep him in prison, all he's going to do is build up a big black hole of resentment, and you'll end up being the one who's crushed by it. The only thing you can do is be proactive and work out better punishment where Loki actually learns a lesson."

"Am I to guess that you have a punishment in mind?" Thor asks.

"I might be able to help you brainstorm."

"Is your idea for his punishment that I banish him to Midgard with you?"

Well, crap. So much for slowly and subtly bringing Thor around to that facet of the plan. "Banish him to Midgard?" Tony asks, forcing as much doubt as he can muster into his voice. "Hmm. Interesting. Tricky to pull off, but you know... it might just work. That's actually a really good idea, Thor. Banishing him to Midgard could be the ideal solution here."

"I know that is what you want me to do, Tony Stark," Thor says in a tone that makes him sound way too much like Loki. His single raised eyebrow makes him _look_ way too much like Loki.

"Okay, fine," Tony admits, dropping the whole stupid act. "Yeah, you got me. I want you to banish Loki to Midgard. But hear me out. This isn't just about me and my selfish reasons for wanting Loki back on Earth, which, yes, do exist. I honestly think prison is the worst possible place for him. Keeping him in there, all you're doing is fuelling whatever it is that sent him over the edge in the first place. He really doesn't need to be locked up alone with his thoughts. He needs a chance to earn back some self-respect. You send him to Earth, I can get him to work with me on new projects based on Tesseract energy stored in those guns S.H.I.E.L.D. has. He can help me, he can help S.H.I.E.L.D., and he can do some useful, rewarding work for once. Sentence him to hard scientific labor instead of solitary confinement."

He stops there to give Thor a chance to think things over. From what he can see in the hard expression and tightened jaw, Thor is thinking. Thor's giving this some serious thought, which is a good sign, though the way his eyes keep getting narrower and narrower as the seconds crawl by starts to eat away at Tony's confidence.

Thor's stuck on one little detail. Tony's pretty sure he can guess what it is.

"He would be with you," Thor says, and not in a reassuring way. It's that judgmental way that makes a sour, acid taste rise in the back of Tony's throat, because he knows exactly what Thor means.

"Yeah," Tony quietly replies through his teeth. "He'd be with me."

"Then my answer is no." Standing, Thor pushes his chair back from the table and paces away, like that's his final answer. "Loki will remain here in Asgard."

"Why?" Tony snaps, fighting the urge to jump up himself. No, he needs to stay calm. Calm and rational. Fight Thor with logic instead of fists. He learned his lesson hitting one Asgardian already today. "You don't agree with it, so you'd deny him the one thing that might stand a chance of making him happy?"

"Loki was raised as a prince of Asgard," Thor dismissively replies. "He needs to learn to behave as one. He needs to learn-"

"He needs to learn how to not be an evil sack of shit," says Tony. "That's all. And I think I can help him with that."

"He needs none of your _help_, Tony Stark."

Maybe he could fight Thor just a little bit. And then he'd probably die of critical smack-down, though wouldn't it be worthwhile to land a hit on somebody who deserved it? But he stays in his seat. "On the contrary," he says instead, sticking to the verbal jibes. "I could help a lot. If porn's taught me anything over the years, it's that there's no problem that can't be solved by a good, hard dicking."

If only he could see that mental image through Thor's mind's eye. It must be a good one: Thor's whole face twists in disgust and he makes a threatening step in Tony's direction. "You dare to speak of my brother with such disrespect?!"

"Why not?" Tony asks with a shrug. "Everyone else does. You're treating him with a pretty astounding level of disrespect right now, keeping him in prison not for what he's done but because he's the loose cannon of the family who needs to be controlled."

"Loki is a criminal."

"Guilty of what? Killing people? Starting a war? Now hang on a minute," Tony says, staring Thor square in the eye, "but didn't you do exactly the same thing on Jotunheim? You killed some Jotuns and rekindled an ancient feud, and you got a three-day time out on Earth. Loki killed some humans and kicked off an alien invasion, and he gets indefinite imprisonment. How is this fair? Oh wait!" he adds, before Thor has a chance to answer. "It isn't! So that's all I want, Thor: fairness. Give him the exact punishment you got. Send him down to Earth for three days or three decades or however the hell long it takes him to learn his lesson.

"No," Thor says. Straight-up, flat-out no.

"You don't have to answer yet," says Tony.

"But I did answer. And my answer is no."

"But you didn't think it over thoroughly." He stands up with a yawn and a stretch, hoping that action will be enough to distract Thor from shooting him down yet again. It almost is.

"I don't need-" Thor starts.

"Just do me this favor. Please. Think it over. Think it over carefully. Are you keeping Loki in jail because that's what he really deserves, or do you love your brother enough that you'll give him a chance at something better? Do you want him sitting down there hating you, wasting every day building up his walls to shut you out? Or can you get over whatever ideas you have about what he should be and instead try to help the person he is?"

"He..." Thor tries again, but with far less conviction than before, and the word dies down into a low exhalation of breath.

"Think about what's best for Loki," Tony tells him. "Okay? Really think."

Thor grunts. His head's down and he's looking at the floor, scuffing the toe of his boot on the polished stone. He doesn't say anything else, and doesn't look like he's about to say anything else. No more arguments. But no promises, either. The conversation must be over.

"I know you're a good brother to him, Thor. And I know you want him to be happy."

Thor just grunts again. It's over.

So Tony makes his exit not exactly on a high note, but at least on a moderately pitched note with the ambition to arpeggio upwards. Cautiously optimistic. And if this plan doesn't work out, well, there's always the explosive jailbreak plan B to fall back on.

But when he goes to see Loki the next morning, the doors the dungeon are barred, though nobody will give him a reason why.

Just vague excuses leading to a wrench of a feeling in Tony's stomach that something has gone very, very wrong.


End file.
